Assistant Director
Shakespeare's 17th century masterpiece about the "Melancholy Dane" was given one of its best screen treatments by Soviet director Grigori Kozintsev. Kozintsev's Elsinore was a real castle in Estonia, utilized metaphorically as the "stone prison" of the mind wherein Hamlet must confine himself in order to avenge his father's death. Hamlet himself is portrayed (by Innokenti Smoktunovsky) as the sole sensitive intellectual in a world made up of debauchers and revellers. Several of Kozintsev directorial choices seem deliberately calculated to inflame the purists: Hamlet's delivers his "To be or not to be" soliloquy with his back to the camera, allowing the audience to fill in its own interpretations.
First Assistant Director
About the great Czech satirist Jaroslav Hašek, who was captured by the Russians during the First World War. Not wanting to fight for the interests of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Hašek enters the Red Army and, as a commissar of the international brigade, goes the military way from Samara to Irkutsk.
Assistant Director
Semyon Danilovich Petukhov was very surprised to found upon returning from vacation that he was declared dead and... buried.
Assistant Director
The young composer Mikhail Glinka performs his new work at a soiree at earl Vielgorsky's house. However, the public is accustomed to Western music, and reacts coldly to the creation of the composer. This makes him very sad, but soon he decides to go learn the art of music in Italy. After returning from Italy, he is full of desire to write national Russian opera. Vasily Zhukovsky proposes a subject: a feat of Ivan Susanin. Tsar Nicholas I change the name of the opera to A Life for the Tsar and assigns a librettist - Baron Rosen. Acquaintance with the future co-author shocked Glinka: Rosen speaks Russian with a noticeable German accent. The premiere was successful, but Glinka was still not entirely happy with the libretto: "False words were written by Rosen". When Nicholas I learned that Ruslan and Lyudmila was written on Pushkin's subject, he sees it as sedition. The bitter experience of the composer brighten his supporters.
Smiling Woman in the Church (uncredited)
16세기 후반 여러 명의 공후들이 러시아 땅을 나누어 통치하고 있었다. 그 중에서 모스크바의 대공이었던 이반 4세는 자신이 분열된 영토를 이민족의 침입으로부터 보호하고 통일시키겠다는 야심에 찬 계획을 갖고 전 러시아의 황제로 취임한다. 귀족 출신의 아내 아나스타시야를 황후로 맞이한 이반은 취임 직후부터 경쟁 관계에 있는 귀족들의 반발에 부딪친다. 모스크바 시내 곳곳에 방화 사건이 발생하고 민심이 흉흉해진다. 한편 카잔 지방에 본거지를 둔 몽고의 칸은 모스크바가 자신들에게 복종할 것을 요구하고 전쟁을 벌인다. 이반 대제가 이끄는 러시아군은 이 전쟁에서 승리한다. 그러나 전쟁에서 승리한 후 모스크바로 귀환하는 도중 이반은 병에 걸려 중태에 빠지게 된다. 이반의 권력이 약화되기만을 기다리고 있던 귀족들은 이 기회를 이용하여 블라디미르 대공을 황제로 앉히려는 음모를 꾸미는데...
Assistant Director
Collective farmers of the Volga region decide to create the first female fishing team. Her hardworking and neat Varvara Kladova, a quiet and gentle woman suffering from adultery with Stepan's husband, becomes her head. Having overcome the first difficulties, women are ahead of the brigade of men. And this makes Stepan look at his wife with different eyes.
Assistant Director
The film tells about a band of demobilized Red Army men and two civilians who cross a Middle Asian desert. They are forced to do battle with superior forces of Basmachi rebels for the dry draw-well.
Second Unit
Olya Ivanova
maid of the hotel
A film adaptation of the short story of the same name by Guy de Maupassant. The action takes place in the XIX century. Franco-Prussian War of 1870. A group of French bourgeois leaves in a stagecoach from Rouen occupied by Prussian troops. Along with them comes one attractive demimonde lady. The only way to get out is to persuade her, nicknamed "Ball-of-Fat" a la "Boule-de-Suif" to satisfy the lust of the head of the gendarmerie...
Assistant Director
A film adaptation of the short story of the same name by Guy de Maupassant. The action takes place in the XIX century. Franco-Prussian War of 1870. A group of French bourgeois leaves in a stagecoach from Rouen occupied by Prussian troops. Along with them comes one attractive demimonde lady. The only way to get out is to persuade her, nicknamed "Ball-of-Fat" a la "Boule-de-Suif" to satisfy the lust of the head of the gendarmerie...
Assistant Director
Directed by Ivan Pyryev.
