It was back in the good old days when there was still Little Father Tsar to do all the purging in holy Russia. It was in the idyllic sixties, when maidens still raved of fauns and peasant-song, that a handsome young Emperor of all the Russias bound his fate to that of an impetuous little princess who had grown up in hatred of "all the Romanovs."

The story of the tragic love between Tsar Alexander II and Princess Dolgoruki is told tenderly and tearfully in "Katia," the new French film at the Fine Arts. A gushing romance not entirely free from 10c novellette effects, "Katia" manages to stir up cavalier emotions in an audience hardened by Clark Gable and Joan Crawford. Despite its shallow "profundity" qui est tres francais, the dialogue sounds surprisingly convincing in the mouths of Alexander and his entourage, who achieved movie sentimentality even before the invention of celluloid. By no means historically faithful, "Katia" catches the spirit of the era it depicts--perhaps because Alexandrine Russia was still so desperately French.

Need it be said that Danielle Darrieux as Princess Dolgoruki is so appealingly feminine that to call her a "good actress" would be an in sult? Her development from a wild, self-willed girl to a woman possessed by her one and only love is a woman's rather than a star's performance. John Loder as the Tsar is almost repulsively sweet; but again there may be some historical justification for that. His promising career as Russia's liberator is cruelly broken off by an assassin's bullet--and the touching show comes to a touching end. Katia's final words: "Pauvre Russie!" sets the audience reflecting on the present as well as the past.