Nina Shaternikova

The Gentlefolks of Skotinin

A comedy starring Nina Shaternikova, The Skotinins is loosely based on the 18th century play The Minor by Denis Fonvizin. In it, the upper class is shown as both depraved and stupid, engaging a variety of absurd, over-the-top follies.

Professor Mamlock

Based on a play by a German-Jewish exile in Moscow, Friedrich Wolf, and directed by an Austrian-Jewish exile in Moscow, Herbert Rappaport, the film tells with the story of an apolitical humanitarian Jewish doctor and his politically-aware, fascism-resisting son, an intern, as their lives become entangled with the Nazis’ rise to power in 1930s Germany, where they live and practice. Things come to a head when the Nazi organization takes control of their hospital, and place a rabid antisemitic physician in charge over Mamlock and his staff.

Lermontov

Chronicle of the life of Russian poet Michail Lermontov, from the final days of Alexandr Pushkin to the fatal destiny of the poet himself.

Lace

Since director Sergei Yutkevich was a longtime lover of American slapstick, his first films were imbued with a playfulness and cheeriness not typical of Russian cinema. And Kruzheva is a good example of that as he illustrates the friendly rivalries between the youths on village in both a very rough and clowning way.

In the Days of Struggle

An agit-film about the struggle of Ukrainian peasants against the White Poles. A young woman, the daughter of a blacksmith taken prisoner by the White Poles, and a Red commander organise a partisan unit. One scene depicts the capture of a Polish landowner attempting to elude capture. He had been hiding from the Red Army soldiers in a barrel. The peasants nailed the barrel shut and, having inscribed the words: ‘To Warsaw – to Mr Piłsudski’, threw it into the Dnieper. Lost film.

The Black Sail

The struggle of the Komsomol members against private speculators for the surrender of fish to the state.

A Man Was Born

A story of a young girl going through the number of hard events in her life.

Lieutenant Kizhe

A copying error by a military scribe turns the Russian words "the lieutenants, however" into what looks like "lieutenant Kizhe". The Tsar reads the error, and wants to meet this (non-existent) lieutenant. The courtiers, eager to avoid the wrath of the temperamental Tsar, create a Kizhe to serve as their royal scapegoat.