This film is important because it is the first directing experience of Lev Kuleshov – the man who would be known as a classic master of the Soviet cinema, an eminent educator, and a tireless experimenter. Everything appears unusual in this film: the structure of the narrative, the briefness of shots used to edit it, the environment in which the characters dwell, the minimalist sets… But the most striking element of all is the tempo of action, which is incredibly fast for its epoch. This apparently unassuming picture was in fact a forerunner of all Soviet cinema avant-garde of the 1920’s. Intertitles have been reconstructed on the basis of a libretto found in 1979.
Nikolaj Izvolov