Thunderstorm

Katerina is married into a merchant house on the Volga run by her mother-in-law, the husband drinks and obeys, and a young man offers something else; she takes it, confesses in a church during a storm, and goes into the river. Alla Tarasova of the Moscow Art Theatre plays her, and Vladimir Petrov directs with the Art Theatre's actors and their manner, so the film is a record of that style as much as of Ostrovsky's play. A prize at Venice in 1934, one of the first Soviet sound films to travel. Soyuzfilm, eighty-five minutes.