Cuore di cane (1976)

In post-October Revolution Russia, Professor Preobrazhensky—a brilliant scientist with bold ideas—decides to put his genius at the service of the new government with a daring experiment: transforming a dog into a human being. So he and his assistant Bormental transplant the organs of a bureaucrat who had died just a few hours earlier into the body of a gentle stray dog named Bobby. The result is a strange creature who will be called Poligraf Poligrafovich Bobikov. As time passes, Bobikov becomes increasingly human in appearance and is laboriously educated and prepared to enter society. However, he displays serious contradictions because of the simultaneous presence of his bureaucratic zeal and his animal nature: he becomes deputy director of Moscow’s Stray Animal Control Subsection, makes advances toward the young housemaid Zina, moves into the professor’s home claiming the right to communal ownership of property, and does not hesitate to report him for alleged counterrevolutionary activities. Exhausted by the turmoil caused by his own creation, Preobrazhensky finally decides to operate on him again, restoring him to his original condition as a dog.