This Russian-language movie poster (see here for a modern visual homage) contains the text “БЕЗДНА. Драма въ 5 частях. По произв. С. Пшибышевскаго. Въ главн. рол Елена Божевская и Владиславъ Ленчевскій. Сценарій и постановка В. Ленчевсаго.” and the name and presumable logo of the theater “Стандартъ.” This text roughly translates in part to “Abyss. Drama in five acts. Starring Helena Bozewska and Wladyslaw Lenczewski. Scripting and direction: W. Lenczewski.” This Tumblr post, sourced to the book Russian Film Posters 1900-1930, identifies the poster artist as Mikhail Kalmanson, and avers that the poster advertised the 1917 Polish movie Topiel (which also means “Abyss”). That’s plausible, since the stars and director on the poster match the casting information in the IMDB entry for the movie. I was unable to determine whether the movie was in turn based on a 1905 Russian short story of the same name by Leonid Andreyev, whose work was often staged and was in this case controversial for its “audacious treatment of sex”, being a response to Leo Tolstoy’s literary condemnation of carnality in The Kreutzer Sonata.

Of potential related interest, the blog post here identifies yet another vintage Soviet movie poster by the same artist that also features a woman menaced by a large cephalopod:

The movie is identified here as The Poison Of The Capital, said to be directed by Petr Chardynin in 1917. IMDB has no entry for that movie, but according to the Historical Dictionary Of Russian and Soviet Cinema, Chardynin made hundreds of films of which only 34 have not been lost. A confirming detail: the same source identifies Vera Kholodnaia (a credited actress on this poster) as Chardynin’s “long-time lead” with whom he made at least one other movie in 1917. (Faustus: The transcribed text from the poster is ‘Столичный ядъ’ Драма вЪ 5ч. ВЪ главн. роляхъ: В.В. Холодная, В.А. Полонскій, И.Н. Худолѣевъ.)
Image provenance by Bacchus at Erosblog.