Mikhail Rostovtsev
Arriving on a resort muscovites - circus artist Gurov and professor Fedorov are forget the houses of passport. Girl-dispatch on mail, hurrying on an appointment, mixes up envelopes, that entails the row of the comic misunderstanding.
A sarcastic comedy about the Russian-Soviet bureaucracy, based on the eponymous novella by Yuri Tynyanov. Set in the reign of Emperor Paul I. A copying error by a military scribe turns the Russian words for "the lieutenants, however" into what looks like "lieutenant Kizhe". The Tsar reads the error, and wants to meet this (non-existent) Lieutenant Kizhe. His courtiers are at first too frightened to contradict the Tsar, but then the fiction turns out to be all too convenient for them. So Lieutenant Kizhe gets himself exiled to Siberia, recalled from exile, promoted, and married. He dies and receives a state funeral. In many ways, he is the most charming and lovable character in the film, even though he remains throughout the film a "confidential person, without a shape".
This film is based on the book about Vasili Ivanovich Chapaev (1887 - 1919) who was in real life the Commander of the 25th Division of the Red Army. Chapaev is an uneducated peasant and a decorated hero in the World War I and later in the Russian Civil War, that followed the Russian revolution. This man of action is fighting on the side of the poor people. His troops consist of peasants, just like him. Unable to write, he can brilliantly demonstrate various battle tactics by moving potatoes on the table. He is street smart. He never lost a battle against the experienced Generals of the Tzar's Army.
After news of the future birth of a child, Sergei split from his wife, Natasha, and settled in the company of young architects, who occupied a room in a big house. As a result of a chain of unforeseen events, brought by one of the tenants found a child, Sergei finds a newborn son. Friends are doing everything possible to find a lost mother, but Sergei does not disclose their affiliation and tries to give the baby the wrong hands.
This 1928 film features stylized cinematography and actors from the Moscow Art Theater in a fiction story based on the life of Jewish Labor Bund member Hirsch Lekert who attempted to assassinate the Vilna governor in 1902 to avenge the flogging of workers who participated in a May Day rally.
