By the Law

By the Law (1926)

По закону

After a man kills two members of his Yukon gold prospecting team, the other two surviving members struggle to keep him subdued for the next several months until they can turn him over to the law.

Date of release
1926-12-03
TMDB
6.6 / 10 (43)
Runtime
1h 20m
Genres
Drama
Director
Lev Kuleshov

Casting

Interesting facts

By the Law is an 83-minute silent action drama film released on 3 December 1926. The film was directed by Lev Kuleshov and produced by the Soviet production company Goskino.

Production

After trying his filmmaking skills in different genres, Lev Kuleshov decided to make a film using minimal resources and a strictly limited number of actors ("chamber film"). After reading the Jack London short story "The Unexpected" and "The Meat", he wrote a script with Viktor Shklovsky based on the narrative.

Kuleshov and co-screenwriter Shklovsky initially thought that the studio would be interested in a low-budget feature with three actors in one setting but the script was rejected and only after an article appeared in support of the picture in the magazine "Soviet Screen" was the film greenlit.

For the role of Edith Nelson Lev Kuleshov cast his wife, actress Aleksandra Khokhlova.

The filming was done in the Moscow Oblast, not far from the Tsaritsynsky ponds. The shore of the Moscow River and two trees near the water created the illusion of the wild northern Yukon. On the riverside, a house of prospectors was placed in which the interior scenes were shot.

Shooting conditions were extremely difficult; cold winter scenes were shot in April and inundation occurred. The decoration of the house was flooded, the crew was knee-deep in water and actors often faced electric shocks because of the damaged insulation of the wires.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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