Vyacheslav Bogachyov

The story of the last year and a half of Tsar Nicholas II and his family from the February Revolution of 1917 to their execution in July 1918.

This film is of interest primarily because it contains within it the entire surviving footage of an unfinished 1974 film by the same director, Slave of Love, which was successfully remade shortly thereafter by another director, Nikita Mikhalkov.The "cover" story is about a woman (Jeanne Moreau) newly released from prison camps in the 1940s back into Russian society, who finds that there is no place for her in the world she has come back to. However, this painterly film is so filled with striking and surreal imagery that it would be misleading to say that the story is of any great importance in relation to that.

The social ferment in late 19th century Russia which led to the 1917 Russian Revolution is movingly portrayed in this lengthy historical drama, which is very faithful to the 1907 novel The Mother by the celebrated Marxist writer Maxim Gorky (1868-1936). In the story, "the mother" (Inna Tchourikova) has no other recourse than to watch her decent, kindly husband turn into an animalistic, drunken brute as a result of working in the inhuman conditions of a steel mill in the town of Sormovo. When he begins to express his suppressed rage by beating her, she is defended by her teenaged son Pavel (depicted Viktor Rakov as an adult, Sacha Chichonok as a boy). After his father's death, Pavel is forced to go to work in the same factory. However, Pavel and his friends begin investigating Marxism and socialist thought, and work to organize their fellow workers.

A dying woman’s wish sends her son on a train journey from the steppes of Uzbekistan to the Russian hinterland in search of his father’s grave. Just as the traveler’s home city of Samarkand is situated on the border between East and West, Khamraev balances his film on the edge of two cultures, evoking the soul of Russia and the crumbling beauty of what was once the Silk Road.

Screen adaptation of the play by Maxim Gorky "Vassa Zheleznova". Saga of the death of a merchant family. For many years, Vassa Zheleznova has been leading the family business and, despite the inconspicuous children, her dissolute husband, alcoholic brother, and revolutionary daughter-in-law, is trying to maintain at least the appearance of a normal family... 1913 is coming, and everything that was dedicated to her life is wrecked.

A parody of the theatre world. The same piece is played out in a few different theatre styles: opera, avant garde, children's theatre, vaudeville etc.

Schoolgirl Masha gets into the fabulous city cheerful workers, which with the help of servants and cap of invisibility inhibits the evil Korol Kropodin I. Before the townspeople finally get rid of oppressors, Masha is a party to the exciting events and adventures.