Sigizmund Krishtofovich

The script about loneliness, conformity and the impossibility of creative realization scared the editorial censorship at the studio, and then at Derzhkino. A lot of claims were made against him. The demands for amendments and endless additions and rewrites by the authors lasted for about a year. The original version of the title "Na pokhony!" ("To bow down!") was replaced by "To Dream and to Live". According to Pylyp Ilyenko, the director's eldest son, this name appeared "as a result of censor pressure." Censorship stopped the tape 40 times: at the stage of the literary script, director's, during film tests (the actors were not approved), filming, etc. The film catastrophically fell apart into fragments, into masterfully filmed, but unrelated scenes. The director called the finished version a "dead film".

The plot centers on a large-scale conspiracy by a group of US military personnel, led by General James Scott, against the current President Jordan Lyman. Further events show that the President, who sent his closest aides and friends to investigate, easily and almost indifferently accepts the news of their deaths, because he is only interested in his own person.