Konstantin Adashevsky Movies

This enjoyable children's film is based on a popular fairy tale by Russian writer Samuil Marshak. When a willful little queen requests a bouquet of snowdrop flowers for New Year's Day, everyone listens. She offers a reward for the flowers -- a basketful of gold. A greedy woman sends her stepdaughter, who she does not like, into the cold forest to hunt for flowers, knowing full well the impossibility of the task. The poor little girl is saved from freezing to death by the Twelve Months, who help her by miraculously creating spring all around her. She is able to return with the flowers -- but then others want a share of the action too. ~ Rovi

The Living Corpse and Redemption were both English-language titles for the Russo-German production Der lebende Leichnam. Based on the play by Leo Tolstoy, the film stars director V. I. Pudovkin in the role immortalized on the Broadway stage by John Barrymore and later played in the Hollywood version of Redemption by John Gilbert. Mistaken for dead, Pudovkin returns to discover that his wife has married his best friend. Unwilling to mar their happiness, the protagonist commits suicide, but not before standing trial for his own murder. Curiously, the review for Variety hailed director Feodor Ozep as a 22-year-old "boy wonder," even though Ozep was well into his thirties at the time. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Avoiding the usual dogmatic approach of wartime Soviet propaganda films, The Girl From Leningrad manage to include a wealth of surefire entertainment values. Zoya Fyodorova is starred as Natasha, an idealistic Russian lass who heads to the front lines to serve as a volunteer nurse. Though she isn't supposed to become emotionally involved with her patients, Natasha falls hard for wounded Red Army officer Lt. Korovin (Alevander Abrikosov). Adding seasoning to this romantic stew are several well-staged battle sequences and even a song or two. The Girl From Leningrad was remade in Hollywood in 1944 as Three Russian Girls, with Anna Sten starring as Natasha. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi