Directed by Yuri Illienko | 71 mins | 1968
Loosely adapted from an 1830 short story by Nikolai Gogol, this is the symbol-rich tale of a farmer, Petro (Boris Khmelnitsky), who, prevented from wedding the lovely Pidorka (Larisa Kadochnikova) by her disapproving father, turns to a demon who promises to expedite their union—for a price. A key inspiration for Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu, Yuri Illienko’s second feature is augmented, like A Spring for the Thirsty (1965) before it, by Leonid Hrabovsky’s intricate, otherworldly soundscapes.