![The Devil's Wheel](https://i3.wp.com/image.tmdb.org/t/p/w185/6dsHIj6On95wd1sFaualmvBPwnJ.jpg)
Plot
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.
Writer | Adrian Piotrovsky |
---|---|
Director | Grigori Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg |
Actor | Lyudmila Semyonova, Pyotr Sobolevsky, Emil Gal |
Country | Soviet Union |
Production | Leningradkino |