Bed and Sofa

Bed and Sofa is the English name of a 1927 Soviet silent film originally released in the Soviet Union as Tretya meshchanskaya, and is sometimes referred to as The Third Meschanskaya. In addition to the title, Bed and Sofa it was also released outside of the Soviet Union under the alternate titles of Three in a Cellar, Old Dovecots, and Cellars of Moscow. The film gets its Russian title from the street on which the main characters live, Third Meshchanskaia Street. Directed by Abram Room and written by Room and Viktor Shklovsky, the film starred Nikolai Batalov as the husband, Kolia, Lyudmila Semyonova as the wife, Liuda, and Vladimir Fogel as the friend, Volodia. Billed as a satire and comedy, Bed and Sofa nonetheless portrayed the realities of the Moscow working poor, while also dealing with starkly sexual situations such as polygamy and abortion. It was originally banned in both the United States and Europe due to those stark sexual situations. While movies made in the USSR would soon be regulated to the ideals of Soviet realism, some films at this time were able to present starker themes.