FEKS began as a futurist theater group that believed in total experimentation, excess, and rebellion. “The tempo of the revolution,” believed Kozintsev, “is that of scandal and publicity.” S.V.D. is the story of the Decembrists' revolt in 1825, but it is not an historical film. The story is used as a springboard for developing a romantic, revolutionary melodrama, with its artistic roots in such disparate areas as the Russian romantic painters of the nineteenth century and “American Eccentrism,” the FEKS term for the “new aspect of the comic outlook on life, created by Anglo-American genius,” slapstick, chases, slim escapes, unbelievable heroism. S.V.D. sometimes has the tempo of an American western, sometimes reminds one of Fantomas, and then still draws you into the period the directors were trying to recreate.