The Club of the Big Deed

Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, Sovkino, 1927, Soviet Union. Also titled Soyuz velikogo dela and SVD. Silent historical drama of the 1825 Decembrist revolt in the south, scenario by Yury Tynyanov and Yulian Oksman. Sergei Gerasimov, Andrei Kostrichkin, Pyotr Sobolevsky, Oleg Zhakov, Yanina Zhejmo. Andrei Moskvin photographed. Released 23 August. Infobox 2,100 meters, about seventy-six minutes; the Commons print runs closer to sixty-nine. A cardsharp named Medoks wins a ring stamped S.V.D.; the initials keep changing meaning while a failed uprising is staged around them. Factory of the Eccentric Actor, still treating history as a con.