Grigori Sarkisov

A young teacher comes to work in his native village, plans to build a new school. The arrival of the teacher causes confusion in the soul of the young neighbor Agrafena Shumilina.

The film concert is composed of a number of opera arias, excerpts from ballets and solo numbers.

Taken from a Lermontov play, the story begins when beautiful Nina loses a bracelet during a masked ball. Another woman finds it and without revealing whose bracelet it belongs to, she gives it to an ardent Calvary officer admirer at the ball. This leads to deeper and deeper incisions upon the urbane social body of Tsarist Russia. A drama of pride, marital distrust, gambling, infidelity and humiliation twirls around the decaying corpse of a perverted social class.

A girl, working in a German commandant's office, saves two wounded Russian pilots sacrificing her own life.

Vardan experiences a period of despair, losing trust in people and believing they use others for personal gain.