In the Rear of the Enemy

A Soviet agent tries to win over a band of gypsies to a happy life on a farm co-op.

Andrei Latonin had jumped with a parachute many times before, but on the day of the holiday he got scared and stayed in the cockpit of the plane. Deeply upset by his failure, Latonin decides to leave his homeland forever and joins a steamship as a sailor. On the way, Andrei meets an expedition group heading for the crater of an active volcano and joins the scientists.

The story takes place in Summer 1942, when a small force of Black Sea Fleet sailors was surrounded by German troops but broke out the encirclement.

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.

Two country boys move to Moscow. One becomes a construction worker who dreams of being an inventor, the other becomes a decadent poet.

Director Frederick Ermler’s last silent feature and the last of four collaborations with actor Fiodor Nikitin. Nikitin plays an officer who spends a decade after the Great War as a shell-shocked amnesiac, until a glimpse of a woman through a train window sparks the return of his memory. He makes his way back to St. Petersburg, now Leningrad, a man out of time who struggles to make sense of the new society brought about by the revolution.

Docu-drama about political and military conflict during the Russian Civil War in 1918, from an orthodox pro-Communist viewpoint.

Igor Savchenko's Accordion (Garmon', 1934) was adapted from a poem by A. Zharov. This film sheds light on the reasons why the mass song came into being. In it, the country boy Timosha stops playing the accordion after being chosen leader of the local Komsomol. When he understands that he must compete with the sad kulak songs played by Tlskliby ("Mournful"), he recognizes his mistake in abandoning his accordion, and in the end he gathers the other youths around him with his lively and merry songs.