Heart of a Dog (1988) on Netflix
In post-revolutionary Moscow, a stray dog becomes Professor Preobrazhensky's test subject. The dog turns into a man, Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov, who moves into the professor's apartment.
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- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb8.5/1010,647 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Plot summary
After the October Revolution, a stray dog in Moscow searches for food and warmth until Professor Preobrazhensky, a surgeon who lives and works in a large apartment, needs an animal for an experiment and lures him inside with a piece of sausage. The household names him Sharik and feeds him well, though the dog cannot understand why he is kept. The professor and his assistant implant a pituitary gland and testicles taken from Klim Chugunkin, an alcoholic and petty criminal who has just died, into the animal's body. Sharik begins to change, becoming more human with each day, and a name is found for the being that emerges: Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov. Sharikov's manners and opinions soon disturb the professor's orderly apartment, while the building committee looks at the extra rooms with interest.
Cast
- Ivan Ganzhaas Zharovkin
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Heart of a Dog (1988)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Director Vladimir Bortko handed his cinematographer a magazine containing the text of Bulgakov's novel instead of a script; when the cinematographer objected, Bortko gave him the same text the next day with descriptions of nature and other details crossed out.
- Some scenes in the film, involving spiritualism, a prophetess in the circus and a Soviet-style christening called "Octobering", were taken from early short stories by Mikhail Bulgakov rather than from the novel.
