A Big Family

The Zhurbin family are shipbuilders. The trade has passed down the generations. Three generations live under one roof. Grandfather Matvei is the eldest. His son Ilya is the next generation. Ilya’s sons work at the yard as well. A fourth generation is born before long. The hardest test falls to the youngest son. His name is Aleksei. Meanwhile the way the work is done is changing. The yard is being reorganised. Everyone has to change their trade. The quarrels inside the family sit on that ground. The story comes from a novel by Vsevolod Kochetov. The film competed at Cannes in 1955, where the cast was given a collective prize. Sergei Lukyanov and Aleksey Batalov appear in the hundred minute film, a Soviet production Iosif Kheifits finished in 1954.