The Overcoat (1926 film)
The Overcoat () is a 1926 Soviet drama film directed by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, based on the Nikolai Gogol stories "Nevsky Prospekt" and "The Overcoat". Charlie Chaplin was invited to play the lead role, but as an alien resident in the United States, was threatened by US government officials with being refused entry back into the country if he made the film and it contained Soviet propaganda. Plot Arriving in St. Petersburg, landowner Ptitsin (Nikolai Gorodnichev) tries to achieve with the help of bribes a favorable decision of his litigation concerning a neighbor. With swindler and blackmailer Yaryzhka (Sergei Gerasimov) he finds a functionary who is willing to take the money. Cautious Bashmachkin (Andrei Kostrichkin) to whom the briber comes, does not want to take on the dangerous enterprise, although he can not resist the charms of a beautiful female stranger (Antonina Eremeeva) whom he met on the Nevsky Prospekt. Later Akaky Akakievich finds out that the woman of his dreams is only an accomplice to swindlers. Fearing punishment, the frightened bureaucrat becomes even more reclusive, all the more carefully isolating himself off from people. Years later, the already aged and decrepit titular counselor Bashmachkin is forced at