Description:

A married man receives a love letter. Based on the light-hearted comedic short story by Anton Chekhov (1886).

The original story can be read in Russian here, and in English here (trans. by Constance Garnett).

Made at the time of the newly-founded association for puppet animation at Soyuzmultfilm. In the early days, not all of their "puppet" films actually used animation - this one seems to be using live-action puppets.

In 1953, the Soyuzmultfilm studio revived the filming of films in which characters were portrayed by variously constructed actor puppets. This included actor puppets whose three-dimensional heads were made of natural porous (foamy) rubber. These rubber mime puppet-actors were seen by spectators for the first time in 1954 in a puppet film directed by G.Z. Lomidze, "In the dacha", based on the eponymous story by A.P. Chekhov [...]. Later in the manufacture of mime doll-actors, they began to use foam rubber (polyurethane foam). But in some cases such actor-dolls are still called "rubber mime dolls" in the old fashioned way. — source