Having co-directed The Seventh Companion with Grigory Aronov, Guerman now discounts his own involvement, citing Aronov’s more conventional approach to filmmaking. Nevertheless, the film displays the oblique approach to Soviet history that characterizes Guerman’s work. Based on the novella by Boris Lavrenev, the film unfolds during the civil war that followed the Bolshevik Revolution. A general in the tsar’s army, having been arrested by the secret police, is released into the brave new world of the Soviet Union. His apartment is now a crowded commune and, with nowhere else to turn (“The fact that you are alive is a misunderstanding,” he is told), the soldier begins a campaign to return to the battlefield.