A Slave of Love

While tsarist Russia is being torn apart by a civil war between the so-called Whites and the Bolsheviks, several filmmakers in Moscow do their best to continue living and working as if nothing is happening. In fact, they decide to make a sentimental melodrama called A Slave of Love, starring silent-film headliner Olga Voznesenskaya (a character inspired by Vera Kholodnaya), who is a bit of a dolt, but is honest nonetheless and has a good heart. Absorbed in her own emotional life, she cannot understand what is causing the revolutionary turmoil embroiling Russia that will soon destroy the world in which she is treated as a goddess. A left-wing cinematographer opens her eyes to the nightmare of the ongoing civil war. A Slave of Love, director Nikita Mikhalkov's second film, captured audiences with its melodramatic structure, its skillful styling reminiscent of silent cinema (similar to the great works by Yelena Solovey), and its humorous portrait of the film community. It also revealed Mikhalkov's interest in the literature and art of pre-revolutionary Russia, something that would later find expression in his adaptations of the works of Chekhov and Goncharov.