Details

Release year: 1949

Storyline

Anna Bedford, a young and idealistic girl from Pennsylvania, accepts a State Department assignment to serve in the US Embassy in Moscow shortly after the allied victory over fascist Germany. Immediately upon her arrival at the new post, she discovers that virtually the entire staff at the embassy is engaged either in espionage or in slandering and vilifying the Soviet state. Her open-minded approach to Soviet reality quickly brings her into conflict with her superiors, who send her back to the States to attend her mother's funeral. While back in Pennsylvania, Anna discovers a changed America, plagued with massive unemployment and hatred fueled by anti-communist hysteria. Even death provides no escape from this national insanity: the cemetery where her mother is buried is plowed under in order to build a new military air base. The film was to end with Anna's return to Moscow, embraced by the masses of the Soviet people and marching with them across Red Square. Work on the film was terminated in April 1951 (under instructions from the Kremlin).

Top credits

Directors

Aleksandr Dovzhenko

Writers

Aleksandr Dovzhenko

Cast

Vyacheslav Gostinsky — Francis Darlington
Liliya Gritsenko — Anna Badford
Nikolai Gritsenko — Armand Howard
Grigori Kirillov — Walter Scott, American Ambassador in Moscow

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Did you know

• The Kremlin ordered this film shut down midway through production in April 1951. Dictator Joseph Stalin was allegedly briefed on the plot and gave it a thumbs down, saying of the lead character, "If she can betray her own country, she can betray her new one". Many years later the surviving footage was restored by Mosfilm and reconstructed as a feature with additional linking material.

• The cancellation of this project effectively ended Aleksandr Dovzhenko's career as a director. He continued to write scripts but was unable to realize another film before his death in 1956.

• Elizaveta Alekseeva's debut.