October 1917. Russian and German soldiers, exhausted by three years of war, began to fraternize. But officers' bullets shot the fraternizers. The survivors - Ilya, Matvey, nurse Olga and German soldier Jakob - swore in front of the fallen soldiers to reach St. Petersburg and achieve peace for all.

October 1917. Russian and German soldiers, exhausted by three years of war, began to fraternize. But officers' bullets shot the fraternizers. The survivors - Ilya, Matvey, nurse Olga and German soldier Jakob - swore in front of the fallen soldiers to reach St. Petersburg and achieve peace for all.

Satire of the bourgeoisie and the West, anti-religious propaganda, agitation for a new lifestye, sees a young female revolutionary in a military helmet and miniskirt, ride a motorcycle through St. Petersburg

In the short-lived Commune of Paris, a conscripted soldier falls in love with a Communard saleswoman. As the army cracks down on the revolutionaries, the soldier is forced to fight against the Commune, and the pair's love is put to the test.

A 1935 USA trade-paper reviewer called it... "an impressive and technically outstanding historical drama dealing with czarist terrorism and revolutionary boiling in the days of 1907. Picture is one of the Soviet prize winners and has particular merits in realistic performance, photography and movement, plus some musical touches in way of folk songs." Written by Les Adams

A 1935 USA trade-paper reviewer called it... "an impressive and technically outstanding historical drama dealing with czarist terrorism and revolutionary boiling in the days of 1907. Picture is one of the Soviet prize winners and has particular merits in realistic performance, photography and movement, plus some musical touches in way of folk songs." Written by Les Adams

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.

Satire of the bourgeoisie and the West, anti-religious propaganda, agitation for a new lifestye, sees a young female revolutionary in a military helmet and miniskirt, ride a motorcycle through St. Petersburg