Bespridannitsa

A penniless gentlewoman, scorned by dowry-obsessed Moscow, becomes the spectral conscience of a society that barters brides like gilt chess-pieces; through frost-bitten parlours and candle-starved alcoves she drifts, her voice cracked yet incandescent, exposing the arithmetic of affection—how rubles trump rubies and a single glance without a purse behind it is promptly pronounced treason. Around her, aristocratic aunts click abacuses of social capital, suitors pirouette between champagne flutes and loaded pistols, while the city itself exhales sooty operettas of gossip into the winter night. The film, shot in 1912 but already haunted by revolution, lets each frame peel like damp wallpaper, revealing fissures of class that would swallow Tsarist Russia whole within a decade.