Acting
Gennadi Michurin's face does ALL the talking. Devastating.
Direction
Chervyakov squeezes 3 acts of pain into 49 tight minutes.

Director
Yevgeni Chervyakov
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Anna Sten later fled to Hollywood where GOLDwyn famously tried (and failed) to make her the next Garbo.
This was peak 'Soviet melodrama' — state-approved but human-focused, before socialist realism crushed all nuance in 1934.