Nikolay Gorodnichev

Lost movie.

In an unnamed English-speaking capitalist land, a young engineer invents inexhaustible giant robots to replace the fragile human workers on high-volume assembly-lines, and soon finds his invention co-opted by the military-industrial complex.

Typically of the heady days of early Soviet cinema, this is constructed according to the fast, sharp editing principles advocated by Eisenstein, complete with symbolic inserts; but in terms of subject matter, it's much less explicitly political than most movies emerging from Russia in the '20s. Chronicling a young sailor's descent into a murky, treacherous underworld of pimps and thieves, after having encountered a Louise Brooks lookalike at a fairground and missed his departing boat, it's a lively moral fable that delights in vivid visual effects and quirky characterisations. If the plot occasionally reveals gaping holes, and the tacked-on ending urging the clearance of the Leningrad slums seems to be rather gratuitous, there's enough going on to keep one attentive and amused.

Soviet film based on "Nevsky Prospekt" and "The Overcoat" by Nikolai Gogol.

The Soviet Far East and Manchukuo are separated by a border river, on one side of which Russian White Guards have settled in a small Manchurian village, while on the opposite bank lives the Vlasov family. Wanting to destroy the Vlasovs, the White Guards break into their house. A detachment of soldiers led by border guard commander Captain Tarasov comes to their aid. A long and exhausting battle ensues.

Spirka Spandyr, a petty crook and swindler, escapes from the Soviet Union after serving his sentence and soon becomes the pride of the White émigré community in Amsterdam — Baron Spirka von Spandyr.

The film recreates episodes from the December Uprising of 1825. Against the backdrop of the uprising, a love story unfolds between the Decembrist Annenkov and Polina Gebl.