At Mežrabpom, the experience of Turkin, a screenplay-writer for Protazanov, the metaphorical imagination of Šeršenevič and the constructivist vision of Koslovskij found a perfect fit with Barnet’s irrepressible descriptive ability drawing from real life. In this first comedy, commissioned to boost interest in government bonds, Barnet takes a break from the usual formal approach and from satire, believing them ineffective for creating a Soviet comedy that intended to really reflect byt, that is, everyday life. Deliberately working with a scant screenplay, Barnet placed all his bets on the actors searching for an overall dynamic that got “the maximum effect from each object and character”. He would later confess a pleasant and extraordinary surprise: “an emotional scene can be built not just through editing but with the mise-en-scene itself”.
As the story unfolds, interspersed with Nataša’s train trips between snowy landscapes and astonishing city scenes, the character’s relationship with objects and space becomes complete. When the girl loses the last train and spends the night with Il’ja, the empty room looks like a kind of Suprematist composition in which the books and large cylinders of the hat boxes are essential shapes that when lined up turn into beds and partitions. The clown-like game created by the actor-characters and object-characters is the only vehicle for sentimental dialogue, expressed in an extraordinary ricochet of hidden impulses and the search for complicity.