One of Ryazanov’s two or three best films, and Basilashvili’s outstanding work as Count Merzlyaev, who is the main character. Hardly passed through the controlling sieve in the dead – “stagnant” time film, sometimes vaudeville-comedy, in fact, about the power of a talented provocateur in the civil service – a specialist indispensable under the tsarist regime for solving some important tasks. Merzlyaev is perfectly organic in the image he designed - in passing, from excess of strength, playfully catching the heroine Talyzina in the frivolous unawareness of vulgarity in the amorous inscription on the cake line of the great Racine. The characters of the film in front of the intellectual-intellectual Merzlyaev, to whom you can not cling, are (almost) helpless and sometimes confused: his activities must either be put up with, or suicidally punch him in the face - or believe in his nobility and patriotism.
In the film, for some reason classified as very kind and sentimental (rather a drama, not much disguised as a comedy), there are very bright moments. Sadalsky's powerful tear-punching monologue at the very end.