Scarlet Sails

When Assol was a little girl an old man made her a prophecy: one day a ship with scarlet sails will come and carry her away. Assol believes it and starts waiting. The village laughs, the children mock her, the years pass. Far off, at the other end of the sea, a young captain hears the story. Aleksandr Ptushko directed the film from Aleksandr Grin's short novel. Ptushko was the master of the fairy tale in Soviet cinema, and here too he works colour, the sea and crowd scenes on a large scale. Anastasiya Vertinskaya plays Assol; it was her first film and she later became one of the best known faces in Soviet cinema. The story is still known in the country today.