Often cited as the first Soviet sound film, The Road to Life uses many titles but also experiments with sound to produce emotional effect. (In a memorable instance, the sound of steam from a locomotive expresses the grief of hundreds of onlookers.) The film is set in 1923, after the Civil War and famine have left thousands of children orphaned and homeless. These waifs, called "bezprizorni" (neglected), roam in packs, begging for a living and stealing when that doesn't work. Urban savages, when "captured" they resist all efforts to reform them. One such gang, led by the Mongolian youth Mustafa, is approached by a sympathetic teacher who desires to set them up at a cooperative school in the country. After many setbacks, the boys are "tamed" by the almost puritanical rural school environment, finally resisting the lure of the underworld and becoming enthusiastic workers on a railroad connecting their school to the outside world. Director Nikolai Ekk would never again direct a film to match this one, which was shown internationally, and inspired William Wellman's Depression-era drama Wild Boys of the Road (1933).