Mikhail Sadovsky

Taken from a Lermontov play, Sergei Gerasimov's Maskarad (1941) begins when beautiful Nina (Makarova) loses a bracelet during a masked ball. Another woman finds it and without revealing whose bracelet it belongs to, she gives it to an ardent Calvary officer admirer at the ball. This leads to deeper and deeper incisions upon the urbane social body of Tsarist Russia. A drama of pride, marital distrust, gambling, infidelity and humiliation twirls around the decaying corpse of a perverted social class.

Based on the play of the same name by I. Popov and L. Stepanov, staged by the State Academic Maly Theater of the USSR.

Alexander Chatsky returns from three years abroad, hoping to rekindle a romance with his childhood sweetheart Sophie. In the meantime, however, she has fallen in love with Molchalin, her father's scheming secretary. As scandal erupts, Chatsky is met with accusations of madness.