“Protazanov was a master of stylization, adapting new forms and techniques with the flexibility of a chameleon. Examining his films one can easily trace the influence of Bauer, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Lubitsch, Griffith, the French ‘avant-garde,’ and so forth. Perhaps Don Diego and Pelageya, too, offers a stylization of sorts—but a cleverly concealed one. A comedy of the 1920s is...