This is a poetic film set in the times of Lenin's NEP. A ballet dancer steals a brooch and gives it as a present to another dancer. This is a crime of passion. A mysterious black ball is after the heroine. She runs away from it and manages to give the brooch in an exquisite pirouette movement, as shiny as diamond facets. What gives a stone its dazzling luster are its polished facets. But the real gem is love, and it's much harder to get than any diamond in the world.
Cinematography
Every shot looks stolen from a jeweler's velvet case.
Direction
Khamdamov makes Lenin's NEP feel like a perfume commercial from hell.
Costume
The brooch has more screen presence than most lead actors.
Director
Rustam Khamdamov
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Khamdamov was a legendary Soviet director who barely completed films; this short is considered his most accessible 'masterpiece that exists.'
The NEP setting isn't random — it was Soviet Russia's brief capitalist fever dream, making theft of luxury goods politically charged.
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