Tuesday | March 12, 2002 7:00 pm

Bed and Sofa
(Tretya meshchanskaya)

Live Piano Accompaniment by Yakov Gubanov
Screening on Film

Directed by Abram Room.
With Nikolai Batalov, Vladmir Fogel.
USSR, 1927, 35mm, black & white, silent, 95 min.

Bed and Sofa is a simple story of a domestic ménage à trois—simple, that is, until the female member of the trio discovers she is pregnant. Once believed lost, the film was rediscovered during the 1970s and has since become regarded as a little Russian masterpiece of the silent era. Bed and Sofa is notable for its frankness—unusual for the era—for the extraordinary fluidity of its camera work in a confined set, and for the natural performances from the cast.