St. Petersburg. Winter of 1917, the eve of the February Revolution. The maid finds in the room the corpse of the murdered tenant. In his pocket, a hotel account was found in the name of Karl Fischer, a well-known banker. An investigation is beginning. In the list of suspects - an agent of the secret police...

The Key

The rat lives in a cage that stands in the room of a large communal apartment in which the poet lives. The apartment is in the house; House - in the yard-well; The courtyard is in the city; And in the courtyard - 1939 ...In the film there are many newsreel frames of those times, the sound series contains both popular and propagandist songs, both Soviet and German. The plot is divided into many unrelated episodes, which are colorized in different colors. The author claims that everything shown should be understood outside of symbolism: everything in the film means only itself.