The Club of the Big Deed
About The Club of the Big Deed
In the winter of the 1825 rising in southern Russia, the gambler Medoks wins a ring marked S.V.D. The letters are read, in turn, as a fool's luck, the Union of the Great Deed, a command to follow and betray, and a union of merry deeds. Officer Sukhanov takes the ring as a sign of the anti-tsarist plot and lets Medoks in. Medoks sells the leaders. Sukhanov, in love with General Vishnevsky's wife, tries to break the prisoners out and is shot. In the original cut he dies. In the version prepared for Europe he lives.
Cast & crew
More about The Club of the Big Deed
Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg directed. Yury Tynyanov and Yulian Oksman wrote it. Andrei Moskvin photographed it. Sovkino released the 2,100-meter film on 23 August 1927. Russian intertitles.
Themes
Background
The story is set on the southern front of the Decembrist revolt of 1825, in winter, with the rising put down and a jailbreak attempted through a passage to a church.
Look
Andrei Moskvin shot the film. The action is placed in the winter of the southern revolt.
Preservation
Two cuts survive in the record of the film: one in which Sukhanov dies and a European version in which he does not.
Notes
- The Russian title is Soyuz velikogo dela, abbreviated S.V.D. It is also called The Union of a Great Cause.
- Sergei Gerasimov plays Medoks. Pyotr Sobolevsky plays Sukhanov. Konstantin Khokhlov is General Vishnevsky. Sofiya Magarill is his wife.
- Yanina Zheymo plays a circus actress. Oleg Zhakov is a young soldier. Emil Gal is a gambler.
- Two endings were issued. Sukhanov dies in the original. He survives in the European version.
Scenes
- Medoks wins the S.V.D. ring in a gambling den.
- The same initials are read as a secret union and then as a cue to betray.
- Sukhanov is shot during the attempt to free the prisoners.
