A murder just happened and it seems the answer is simple on who and how did it. But a casual talk between suspect's mother and prosecutor sets a different point of view on a just opened case.
The Soviet command has alarming information about the new invention of the enemy. According to intelligence, the Nazis delivered a batch of new chemical shells filled with gas of tremendous destructive power to one of the sections of the Eastern Front. The Nazis want to test them in combat conditions, and then apply them on a large scale.
German apparently disavowed this, his first film, because of his co-director Grigori Aranov's more classical approach (and his kowtowing to Soviet authority); too bad, because it's something of a knockout. A brilliant, gripping portrait of the era of "Red Terror" during the civil war that followed the Bolshevik revolution, The Seventh Companion offers a superlative character study in General Adamov (Andrei Popov), a law professor in the tsarist army, who is incarcerated by the Bolshevik secret police along with many other members of the bourgeoisie. Finally released into the new world of the Soviet Union, the resigned officer finds that he has lost everything from his old life except a mantel clock that he carries through the night from place to place, until he ends up, like Rossellini's inmate seeking readmission to prison in Dovè la liberta?, back where he started.
Volkhov Front in 1942. The young political instructor of the counter-propaganda department of the headquarters of the division Rusanov is torn to the forefront. Together with an experienced warrior — captain Shaternikov — the hero gets to the forefront and transmits from the sound transmission programs addressed to German soldiers. And in the hours of calm passes several kilometers in order to see Katya, the signal woman of a neighboring sector of the front.
This literary adaptation was one of only two films made during World War II on the subject of the Civil War following the Bolshevik Revolution, as attention by filmmakers and viewers shifted away from past history and toward the current conflict.
