CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
EN/FR
Search
Menu
Research dossier · Arts & Letters

The Iron Heel (film)

1919 film

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ4178748 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Iron Heel (Russian: Железная пята, romanized: Zheleznaya pyata) is a 1919 Soviet silent film directed by Vladimir Gardin. It is based on Jack London's 1908 novel The Iron Heel.

The main theme of London's book was the rise of a mass Socialist movement in the United States, with the potential to take power and implement a radical Socialist program, and its suppression by a well-organized coup of conservative Oligarchs. This had direct relevance to the situation in Russia at the time when the film was made, when the Russian Civil War was still raging and the newly created Soviet regime, born of the October Revolution, was still threatened by the counter-revolutionary White armies.

Cast

Olga Bonus

Anatoli Gorchilin

Aleksandra Khokhlova

Ivan Khudoleyev

Leonid Leonidov

Olga Preobrazhenskaya

Nina Shaternikova

Nikolai Znamensky

See also

The Iron Heel of Oligarchy

References

Bibliography

Christie, Ian & Taylor, Richard. The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents 1896–1939. Routledge, 2012.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “The Iron Heel (film)” as 1919 film. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Iron, Heel and film.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1919, 1908, 1896, 1939—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Iron, Heel and film providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “The Iron Heel (film)”, the useful work is to connect “1919 film” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4178748. The first chronological checks are 1919, 1908, 1896 and 1939.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Iron Heel (film)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Iron Heel (film) primary sources, The Iron Heel (film) archive and Iron research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Iron Heel (film)”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Iron Heel (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.