In this vivid, visually striking film, the naive 22-year-old Asa returns to the steppes of Kazakhstan from service as a rating with the Russian pacific fleet. He's full of tall tales and determined to find a wife and put together his own flock of sheep, but neither aim, he discovers, is easily attained. The movie belongs to the tradition of staged ethnographic features that began in the silent era with Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North and the Cooper-Schoedsack Grass. The difference is that here the chief parts are played by actors, though you wouldn't have guessed it.