Petersburg Nights

Saint Petersburg, 1858. A group of composers known as The Five meet at Balakirev's. Young Modest Mussorgsky, both a civil servant and a musician, has become a fixture there. He tells about the first opera he plans to compose. Then he goes to the country where he discovers the lowly conditions of the peasants and the bloody conflicts with the rich land owners. He works on Gogol's 'The Marriage', trying to render into music the natural accents of the play's naturalistic dialogue. But his efforts do not pan out. On the other hand, he starts writing his opera on the story of Boris Godunov. The Marinsky Theatre refuses to stage the work. The Five, and Mussorgsky among them, are libeled and the group starts disintegrating. When 'Boris Godunov' is finally performed in 1874, it is a popular success.

A Socialist Realist distortion of Dr. Paul Kammerer's experiments in the inheritance of acquired character(istic)s -- the (not entirely anti-Darwinian) conjecture that certain changes the environment produces in an individual may spontaneously appear in the next generation. As recounted in Arthur Koestler's The Case of the Midwife Toad (1971), Kammerer (1880-1926) claimed that darkened footpads he had artificially induced in a toad had been passed on to its offspring. When it was discovered that his critical specimen had been injected with ink (though why and by whom is still unknown), his credibility was destroyed and he apparently suicided. Richard Goldschmidt's synopsis of the film in "Research and Politics," Nature (1949), mocks it as Soviet propaganda in support of the inheritance of acquired characters: The importance attached to the subject is revealed by the facts that none other than the then all-powerful [People's] Commissar for [Public] Education, the highly ...

Germany, the 1930s. A young scientist, Professor Johannes Werner discovers rays of life-giving power. The scientist refuses to give up his invention for military use and, breaking the equipment, runs to the USA, where he hides for a long time under the name of Martini. One day, after being invited to a military industrial concern to see a new European invention, Werner meets his former pupil Huber. Huber, a traitor and fascist, has restored the professor's apparatus according to stolen plans and is demonstrating it as his own invention. Werner rejects the proposal for joint cooperation and, at a meeting in the hall of scientific associations, reveals his real name and resolutely reveals the criminal intentions of the revanchists.

"Paris Commune," 1870-1871. Poor working class in Paris rises up against their oppressors as France is defeated by Germany in the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian war.

Russia, 1875: In Riazan’, Dr Pavlov is summoned to a landowner who refuses to accept the inevitability of his death; to Pavlov’s dismay, he orders the destruction of a beautiful apple orchard. 1894: Experimenting on dogs, Pavlov tries to comprehend the interaction between nerves and external signals governing digestion. In 1904, he formulates the principles of conditional reflexes. When Zvantsev, an opponent of Pavlov’s materialist worldview, leaves the laboratory, the scientist hires Varvara Ivanova who becomes his most reliable assistant. 1912: Pavlov receives an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University. 1917: Despite Pavlov’s political scepticism, the Bolshevik administration treats him with great respect.

Swept up in political unrest during World War I, two sisters in St. Petersburg cope with turbulent romances as Russian history is made around them.

Biographical film about the composer Rimskiy-Korsakov. Belongs to the gallery of costume historical and biographical films of the postwar cinema of the Soviet Union. The film tells about the last two decades in the life of Russian composer.

Directed by Grigori Roshal.

The screen adaptation of the novel "Abai" by Mukhtar Auezov recreates the story of prominent Kazakh poet and philosopher Abay Kunanbayev. The famous Kazakh poet became friends with the Russian exile, scientist Nifont Dolgopolov. Under the influence of their growing friendship, Abai formed some of his academic ideas and principles.

Based on a novel by Vsevolod Vishnevsky. January 1917. The workers and peasants of Russia, hunted by the tsarist government in the trenches, forced to defend alien interests of the king, the landowners and exploiters-capitalists. Bolshevik worker Yakov Orel, selflessly performing party mission, said the soldiers the truth about war, about revolution, about what the overthrow of the autocracy does not mean the liberation of the workers from the yoke of landlords and capitalists exploitation. For example, one regiment of the film reflects the events that took place in the whole of the Russian army between February and October 1917.

Local comic duo from the Ukraine reach for the "big time" by entering a talent contest for the Moscow vaudeville circuit, must overcome the interference of an established, competition-shy duo who are helping judge the contest.

The poor Melnik family lives in Zarasai region. Elder Mary parents struggle to send Marry to school but they did this anyway. The horizons of the girl, who until then had learned only from the old grandfather Peter, are spreading there, she, as if seeing herself in her place, tells the class about the legendary hero of Lithuanian history Grazina. Deprivation prevents Maryte from graduating, so she starts working in a candy factory where she hears political inferences. 1940, Vilnius is returned to Lithuania. Maryte, her best friend Elena and a group of young people in national costumes get ready to walk to the capital. In the periphery, the Bolsheviks remember the land of the rich, distribute it to the poor, and Mary dreams of continuing her studies and becoming a doctor. The dream is interrupted by the outbreak of World War II.

Russian filmmaker Vera Stroyeva specialized in a cinematic adaptations of famous operas. One of the most successful of these was her 1955 film version of Mussorgsky and Pushkin's Boris Godunov. Stroyeva's adaptation deftly streamlines the story of a Russian czar whose life is placed in jeopardy by a pretender to his throne. A. Pirogov sings the title role, while G. Nellep provides vocal and visual menace as the "False Dmitri". The use of a color process known as Magicolor adds just the right touch of theatrical artificiality to the pomp-and-splendor proceedings. Boris Godunov was released in the US in 1959, at a time when the only Russian most Americans were concerned with was named not Boris but Nikita.

Modest Mussorgsky's final opera, left unfinished at the time of this death in March of 1881.

Young Soviet farm workers are treated to a weekend in Moscow visiting the Bolshoi theater, in gratitude for which they invite the artists who've befriended them to visit their farm and be entertained by performances of their own.