The Duel

The account is set in the eighteen nineties. At its centre are two men. Both come from the educated class. Laevsky is a clerk in an office. He is sick of the life he is living. Boredom and emptiness eat at him. He wants out of that circle. But he does not know what to do. Facing him stands Von Coren. Von Coren works in the natural sciences. He finds people like Laevsky unnecessary. In his view such men should be got rid of. The tension between them grows. In the end it comes as far as a duel. Oleg Dal and Vladimir Vysotsky take the leads, with Anatoliy Papanov also in the cast, in Iosif Kheifits’s Soviet film of 1973.