The Peasants' Lot

A three-reel Khanzhonkov production by Vasily Goncharov, photographed by Louis Forestier, and an early showcase for Ivan Mosjoukine, already a star years before he fled to Paris. Petr is courting Masha; a fire ruins her family and Petr's father forbids the match. Destitute, Masha goes to the city as a maid, is forced by her employer, and later takes a grim revenge that ends in a stabbing. Made with official approval as a portrait of rural Russia, it is bleaker than the brief suggests: a 1912 village tragedy that treats sexual exploitation and class ruin without the revolutionary montage that would later define Russian cinema.