The Eagle (1925)

The Eagle's story is from Pushkin's unfinished short story Dubrovsky written in 1841. It's not just that the film plot is nothing like the original, it's really how different it is.
Pushkin's story in the translation I read is a medley of styles and purposes. It's a rather melodramatic love affair playing on the conventions of the brigand-love-beautiful-damsel type. There's plently of costume play, disguises, secret identities and sudden dramatic revelations (notably with Dubrovsky's living with Troekurov as the French tutor Mr. Deforge). In the second part of the story, this becomes the prevalent notion, even if Pushkin retains more than a trace of irony in the marriage of beautiful Marya Kirilovna to old rake Prince Vereisky. Instead of a conventional last-minute rescue from Dubrovsky (and one expects that he's going to turn up at the secret, and rapid, marriage ceremony, either as a fake priest, or even as the Prince himself), the young girl gets married, and packed off to a life of solitude and misery. Indeed, she did not say "no", and commonsense (but not romantic) Dubrovsky is a fool for having counted on the girl's stamina (turns out she had none: she herself was not a romantic heroine, in spite of Pushkin's self-conscious assertion to the opposite at the beginning of chapter VIII: "The reader has probably already guessed that Kiril Petrovitch's daughter (...) is the heroine of our story"). Unceremoniously, the story drops her, and finishes off Dubrovsky himself by shipping him abroad after a conclusive, if rather unheroic, battle against the Czar's soldiers in the woods.
This irony is everywhere to be felt in the first part of the story, before Dubrovsky reveals himself behind his disguise of Mr. Deforge. It is irony attacking small-country squires and their gross manners (Troekurov's amorous inclinaisons towards his serf-maidens), local police corruption (the new captain of the police force agreeing with Troekurov that he is, indeed, a fool), justice (Chapter II: "We quote [the court's decision] in full, believing that every one will be pleased to learn one of the methods whereby in Russia a man can lose an estate to which he has incontestable rights") -- official Russia is in for a severe flogging. Everything is turned on its head: even friendship becomes full-fledged hatred (between Troekurov and Dubrovsky, life-long pals) on the spur of the moment. This irony indeed allows the melodramatic plot to move forward and be more acceptable: if Dubrovsky becomes instantly crazy at the reading of the court's decision against him, it is not because we are in a bad Pamela sort of story, but because he is a fool and open to ridicule. This is a very clever narrative strategy as it allows Pushkin to get away with rather incredible, and very unsatisfying, elements in his story (Dubrovsky disappearing at the end for instance), by charging them all to the sense that all humans, deep down, are ridiculous.
As the hero to the story, Dubrovsky does not escape from this pervasive sense of ridicule. Dubrovsky's opening description is not exactly flattering: "It is time to introduce the reader to the real hero of our story. (...) Careless and ambitious, he indulged in extravagance, played cards, made debts and, little troubling about the future, vaguely thought sometimes that sooner or later he would have to marry a rich wife" (chapter III). Then again, his dreaminess when decisive action is required, on the way back to his father's house, does not bode very well. Conversely, his decisive action, when Troekurov comes to apologize and give him back his estate, could not come at a worst moment -- he turns him away without listening --, a moment when some dreamy listening might have been in order. Here again, Pushkin takes very conventional traditions, and subtly, slowly, turns them into outright ironic ridicule.
And then there are the "little people". Serfs, servants, coach-drivers, police officers, no-account local landlords, small village urchins, they all have a name, an identity, and make for a strong presence in the tale. Not only is this ridiculous melodramatic story set in real places where the geography (notably between the estates of the two feuding families) is clear and organized (including over time: Dubrovksy remembers when as a child he used to play in this wood and that with little Masha); it also has a strong realistic social background. This is, of course, on a par with the social criticism implicit in this story of outright corruption. But it is still remarkable how the power figures (Czar, Catherine II) are absent (except as distant points of reference that have no influence whatsoever on the story), and how the story is focused on a rather narrow, and a lower, sociological circle.
In the end, no one knows what's going on. The real authorities (the soldiers in the end) are far away. Once they intervene the story ends (but Pushkin refuses the mantle of efficiency to them: their battle with Dubrovsky is a disaster, even if he does decide to run away because of them). There is a story because those little people are trapped together in some no-account landscape and place. No one is in charge, the story goes by leaps and bounds, dictated by the moods of this or that character, irrationally. Still the serfs are touching figures, in their devotion to Dubrovsky (though he has no regard for them and their devotion, in the end calling them all brigands), and even if they prefer to save a cat to a police-officer (in the fire of Dubrovsky's house). Pushkin brings the story down to earth, where it belonged in the first place, strips it of romantic conventions, exposes corruption -- and leaves them all behind in the end. It's a way of grounding the story in a very realistic setting -- to deny it any reality because the fanciful irony is everywhere, and masterfully discharged by the narrator.
I'll be looking at the film story next. I think there's a story there in how Hollywood, in 1925, with Valentino and remarkable technical achievements, refuses anything that reeks of outright social irony, goes back to the melodramatic romanticism, adds an extra layer of it just to make sure -- but still manages to touch us.