In a remote village where people still drive out the devils with spring, and pay homage to the gods, there are rivalries going on. Both Olga Lenskaya and Zana Zanoni want mighty hunter and trapper Gleb Kusnetsov. Miss Kusnetsov is happy to buy magic charms from the local sorcerer. Meanwhile the local cooperative store is running out of goods to sell, prompting members to say they should close it down and give their business to Ivan Arkanov, Miss Zanoni's father.
The copy I looked at was a reconstructed copy from Gosfilmfond, blurry and aparently missing a reel. Still, by paying close attention I could figure out what was going on in this equivalent of a hillbilly town where the forces of socialism have nonetheles taken root, because it is good and regular commerce is bad. Aleksey Dmitriev only directed eight films from 1925 through 1931, and died in 1939 about about 50. But it's clear that he was using this film to push the Soviet Union as much as to tell a love story set in the back country. The pacing is a brisk, Academician pace, but the poor state of the print makes it impossible to comment usefully about anything else.
