Mikhail Shifman

Based on the play of the same name by F. Dumanoir and D'Ennery about the pure and strong love of the dancer Maritana, the favorite of the poor of Madrid, and the unemployed vagabond - Grand , a courageous and noble defender of the oppressed.

Typically of the heady days of early Soviet cinema, this is constructed according to the fast, sharp editing principles advocated by Eisenstein, complete with symbolic inserts; but in terms of subject matter, it's much less explicitly political than most movies emerging from Russia in the '20s. Chronicling a young sailor's descent into a murky, treacherous underworld of pimps and thieves, after having encountered a Louise Brooks lookalike at a fairground and missed his departing boat, it's a lively moral fable that delights in vivid visual effects and quirky characterisations. If the plot occasionally reveals gaping holes, and the tacked-on ending urging the clearance of the Leningrad slums seems to be rather gratuitous, there's enough going on to keep one attentive and amused.

The film is set in old Yuzovka on the eve of 1905. After searching the Kolchugins' apartment, where money from the strike fund was hidden, the police arrest Anna Kolchugina and her lodger, the miner and revolutionary Kuzma. Anna's teenage son, Stepan, is forced to go to work in the mine. There he learns about the existence of the revolutionary underground and joins its struggle.

The airborne trickster - Aleksei Tomylin, civil aviation pilot - one day decides to stop tempting fate and only flies directly. The airport where Tomylin works is near the border with Afghanistan. One day he receives the task to fly across the border and transfer a package with an order to catch a notorious saboteur. On his way back, Tomylin crash lands near an abandoned settlement - and soon finds himself taken hostage by a gang. The hero pretends to agree to take the saboteur abroad, and relies only on his expertise as a flying ace.....

At the beginning of 1919, a serious threat loomed over Astrakhan: British aviation was striking from the air, an interventionist fleet was approaching by sea, and Kolchak and Denikin were besieging the city from the land. Under the direction of the new defense leader of the city, a group of communists secretly made their way into Baku, which had been captured by the British. Posing as oil traders, they purchased fuel and successfully delivered it to Astrakhan. The planes of the Red Army soared into the sky—and the defending troops went on the offensive...