As an 18th-century ‘period’ adventure drama, More studënoe would seem to stand far from the topical issues and concerns of the Thaw. Still, in many ways it is one of the most notable films of the early post-Stalin period. The second directorial effort of Jurij Egorov, a 34-year-old graduate of the Institute of Cinematography, More studënoe turned out to be a full-fledged piece of character-centered genre cinema, of assured and relaxed storytelling practically unconstrained by the recent Stalinist aesthetic – in spite of the film’s Stalinist message which praised Russian entrepreneurship and demonstrated the historical origins of Russian heroism, typically touching on the theme of class struggle and exposing a foreign conspiracy.
The adventure format of More studënoe permitted a fascinating interplay of narrative and stylistic patterns (most evident in the film’s two intertwined narratives), which was rare for the ‘Socialist Realist’ cinema and which was imaginatively and efficiently employed by Egorov and his team.
In compliance with the conventions of the heroic drama, the images of Far Northern landscapes in More studënoe were embodiments of the natural sublime and agents of dramatic dynamism rather than representations of the lyrical tonality so dear to the cinema of the Thaw. The grand visuals, photographed by Egorov’s constant collaborator of the post-Stalin period Igor Šatrov, find a perfect equivalent in the score by Gavriil Popov, a talented and versatile composer who, since the 1920s, was balanced among the Russian musical tradition, the avant-garde and Socialist Realist orthodoxy (producing, among other things, the powerfully dramatic score for the 1934 film classic Čapaev).
The dramatic component was further articulated in More studënoe by the subtle individualization of the film’s main characters – in contrast to the cardboard historical figures of the late Stalinist cinema or even to the certain artificiality of the protagonists of the ‘higher’ genre of films about the Revolution, in preparation, as it were, for the complicated characterizations in the World War II films of the emerging post-Stalin cinema.
In the Soviet era, More studënoe was located outside the canon of the Thaw cinema, probably because of its ‘too’ strong entertainment value. Today, it is impressive as a successful early post-Stalinist experiment subjugating an ideological narrative to the logic of a well-motivated dramatic story with credible antagonists and emotional imagery.

Sergej Kapterev