Dyadushkina kvartira

In this very early work from Russian Silent master, Yevgeny Bauer, a man rents out apartments to a range of different people and groups, interacting with the various characters and situations. Essentially a series of comedic situations, the plot here is minimal. While Bauer would soon develop a distinct visual style, built around subtly, well-crafted camera movements, that is not evident in this film, which is entirely filmed as static wide-shots, common in very early cinema. That, combined with a lack of any real action or physical comedy, make this a fairly mundane viewing experience, too heavily reliant on inter-titles. As a result, this silent comedy has not aged well.

Improvident Ivan Mozzhukhin is to look after his uncle's apartment, while the man and his wife are traveling. He is delighted with the servants and the food, and his uncle's cigars. However, he still has no money. So he rents out partners of the place to a father and daughter, a poet, and an old maid. Then he takes the money and spends it on his own girl, while pursuing the young girl he's subletting to.

Mozzhukhin has no problems playing the satyr-like role, and the audience undoubtedly was well ahead of his character in anticipating his final fate. People who know slapstick comedy of the period will find much that is familiar, including a flirting-in-the-park sequence that looks like a polite version of a Sennett comedy of the era. It suggests that Russian audiences, or perhaps the film makers, were middle class, as opposed to the film goers who made up the audiences in western Europe and America.