Ivan Kachalov

This SovKino production was a major early experiment in Soviet historical film about the oprichnina period of Muscovite history, combining the costumed drama and Gothic thrills of the genre with historical materialist commentary on the dialectical collision of scientific progress and patriarchal religious tyranny under Tsar Ivan the Terrible. It follows a self-taught inventor from the serf class Nikishka, whose efforts to build a flying machine incite accusations of witchcraft. Nikishka and his beloved Fima are persecuted by the feudal lord Kurlyatev, who took their village in a petty land squabble. They’re rescued when Kurlyatev’s lands are taken by the Tsar in his autocratic campaign against the feudal system. Ivan puts Nikishka to work in his linen mill, where the young serf is coveted by Tsarina Maria Temryukovna, who the Tsar’s been ignoring in favor of his cupbearer Feodor. A series of harrowing intrigues wind a bloody dance through bedchamber, feast hall, cathedral and dungeon.

It is a social drama that focuses on a peasant village dealing with the struggle of young Komsomol members against old ways of living. The story heavily features themes of combating religious superstitions, prejudices, and a parasitic, phony shaman who exploits uneducated workers with fake medical cures.

Ukrainian silent courtroom drama about the trial on charges of Menachem Mendel Beilis in the ritual murder of 12-year-old Andrey Yushchinsky. Menahem Mendel Beilis was a Ukrainian Jew accused of ritual murder in Kyiv, in the then Russian Empire, in a notorious 1913 trial, known as the Beilis trial or Beilis affair.

Komsomol member Pavel Kudryashov, after seeing his pregnant wife to the village, sheltered a young woman who had fallen behind the train. In Paul's friendly relations with an outside woman, the local philistinism saw a criminal connection. Lost movie.

About life and customs in the boyar environment during the reign of Peter I.