Boris and his accomplices decide to "throw" the famous artist Kirill for a large sum of money. The bandits are trying to kidnap Cyril's daughter. And if it weren't for the arrival of Kirill's brother Dmitry, who is fluent in hand-to-hand combat, the deadly ending cannot be avoided.
The film takes us back to Crimea, during Nazi occupation. Hayk Margaryan, a member of an underground organization, saves a painting by Aivazovsky, which Hitler's soldiers tried to smuggle from Theodosia.
Katerina Izmailova is a filmization of Dmitry Shostakovich's long-suppressed 1936 opera. Galina Vishnevskaya stars as Katerina, a bored 19th century farm wife. At the behest of her grungy lover, Katerina murders her husband and her father-in-law. She and her new beau are both sent to Siberia, where the lover almost immediately takes up with a younger woman. Banned by Stalin for its bleak portrait of Soviet life, Katerina Izmailova was not given a Russian staging for over 40 years; its Metropolitan Opera debut did not occur until 1994. Dmitri Shostakovich also wrote the screenplay for the screen version of Katerina Izmailova.
