Vladimir Kotelnikov

Based on the play of the same name by Maxim Gorky.

Lipa and Vera had been friends since childhood. Now, having finished their boarding school, each of them faces her own path in life. Tormented by poverty, Lipa is forced to marry the old, dull, and cruel Tolokonnikov. However, she cannot bear the tyranny of the cowardly official for long. Leaving her husband, she departs from Rasteryaeva Street. Vera's life turned out differently. Fleeing with a hussar, she spent several turbulent years, but, exhausted, she returned once again to Rasteryaeva Street. And nothing had changed there.

At the end of the boarding school, young Rebecca will find the place of a simple governess, and you really want to get into the world, to marry a noble rich man. And she does not despair, believing that the natural mind helps out no worse than papa's money. Penniless, but full of ambition, Becky is confident of her success at the fair of everyday life.

The action takes place in the pre-revolutionary years and in the first days after the October Revolution. The main character, a female student, becomes an ally of a Bolshevik, who later dies on the front lines of the Civil War.

The hero saw among his colleagues a man whom he had met during the war in the dungeons of the Gestapo. This man reported that a thief from the same cell was trying to escape. The “thief” was shot, and later it turned out that he was the leader of the underground...

Based on the play of the same name by I. Popov and L. Stepanov, staged by the State Academic Maly Theater of the USSR.

In the focus of the film is the fate of Varvara Basova, whose painfully soulless, philistine-gray existence, devoid of ideals and moral content. Relevant today, the picture sounds like a verdict to all who are mired in vulgarity, who have exchanged life for petty pleasures, profit, empty philosophizing.