The Devil's Wheel

Overview

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.

Details

Status

Released

Release date

March 15, 1926

Original language

Russian

Countries

Soviet Union

Production

Lenfilm,Leningradkino

Cast

Tatyana Ventsel,V. Lande,Pyotr Sobolevsky,I. Berezin,Nikolay Foregger,Aleksei Kapler,Aleksandr Kostomolotsky,Andrei Kostrichkin,Emil Gal,Mikhail Shifmanand 10 more

Director

Grigori Kozintsev,Leonid Trauberg

Writer

Adrian Piotrovskiy

Cinematography

Andrey Moskvin

Budget

Not recorded

Revenue

Not recorded

IMDb

tt0016726