The House on Trubnaya

Boris Barnet's irresistible comedy — one of the most purely enjoyable films of the Soviet silent era. Parasha, a young country girl, arrives in Moscow and takes a job as a maid in a chaotic communal apartment building on Trubnaya Square, where she is promptly exploited by her petty-tyrant employers, courted by a sweet young man, and swept up in the absurd bureaucratic tangles of urban Soviet life. Barnet, a former boxer and natural entertainer, directs with an infectious lightness that sets him apart from his more theoretically minded contemporaries. The film is packed with physical comedy, affectionate social observation, and some genuinely dazzling visual gags. A reminder that Soviet cinema of the 1920s could be as warm and funny as it was revolutionary and serious.