This is one of the most beautiful adaptations of Turgenev ever brought to the screen. Through a leisurely, romantic look at a group of frustrated aristocrats in the late nineteenth century, we are shown the reactions of Fyodor, a nobleman who returns to his country estate in Russia after an eleven-year absence. Remembering his unfaithful wife, Varvara, whom he has left in Paris, Fyodor hopes to lose his melancholia in the beautiful surroundings of his youth. The introductory scenes are splendid-Konchalovsky's use of light surpasses the best of Von Sternberg, and he uses color like a great painter. The entire sense of the times is perfectly placed, in the manner of speech and the way characters move. To those accustomed to the types described in this film, through the works of Chekhov and Turgenev, it is obvious that tragedy is inevitable. There is no sentimentality in Konchalovsky's treatment of these aristocrats-he understands the ambivalence in Fyodor's love for the outside world and his boyhood way of life, and he makes us care about these fading symbols of a milieu that had to pass away.-Albert Johnson, SFIFF '69