In the mid-19th century old-fashioned estate based on serfdom laws and traditions, tough and shrewd Arina Petrovna tries her best to make her realm prosper and even expand – despite unwillingness of her husband and three of her four children to lend helping hands. Ten years on, serfdom abolished, and now Porfiry-Yudishka, the epitome of a corrupt, cruel hypocrite, becomes the heir to the estate. Dullness and horrors of life, spent in destroying everybody around him, finally makes him to slowly realize things went somehow wrong. Half-mad, apparently, he goes to the cemetery to "ask for forgiveness" from his mother Arina Petrovna, and dies somewhere along his way, his frozen corpse found the next day.

Genres

Cast

Vladimir Gardin

Porfiriy Golovlyov (Yudishka)

Tatyana Bulakh-Gardina

Annenka

Nina Latonina

Lubinka

Ekaterina Korchagina-Aleksandrovskaya

Ulita (the housekeeper)

Mikhail Tarkhanov

Dergunov (the merchant)

Irina Zarubina

Evprakseya

Vladimir Taskin

Petenka

Elena Volyntseva

old woman

Vera Streshneva

Galkina

Stepan Kayukov

Ignat (clerk)

Valentin Kiselyov

Foka

Ivan Chuvelyov

peasant