The Archives

• 08.02.08
  Babes in arms
  Movies (3)

  In keeping with my policy of making superficial comments in this blog, I need to ask, why this movie convention of portraying a babe in arms as some stiff-as-a-board object covered up in baby blankets? The above scene is from the wonderful musical film, Obyknovennoye chudo, but I can't think of a Russian movie that doesn't portray babies this way. There may have been an attempt in Komissar to depart briefly from this convention. But even there, the mother is holding some lightweight object that certainly doesn't have the heft of an actual baby, nor does ...
  
  
• 03.18.08
  Criminal jargon in the gulag
  Movies (0)

  Anne Applebaum talks about the gulag criminals' slang, saying it was "so distinct from ordinary Russian that it almost qualifies as a separate language." I wonder if an echo of that jargon is in the movie Dzhentlmeny udachi (Gentlemen of Fortune, 1971). Applebaum's book emphasises the 30s, 40s, and early 50s. The gulags were definitely gentler by 1971. But I wonder how much of that movie had gulag connotations for Russian viewers. In Gentlemen of Fortune, the main character (played by Yevgeny Leonov) is a kindhearted kindergarten teacher who is recruited to impersonate a murderous criminal ...
  
  
• 08.31.07
  Nonna Mordyukova
  Movies (0)

  Maybe I didn't give Brilliantovaya ruka quite enough credit. I only gave it a Netflix rating of 3, but there is an interesting part played by Nonna Modryukova. It took me a while to remember where I had seen her before. She was the Komissar in the movie Komissar, and did a great job in that film. Some googling informed me that she had also been in the film Vokzal dlya Dvoikh. Of course. Now I remember. She was the "Uncle" who gave that subversive little talk about the virtues of private ...
  
  
• 08.26.07
  Brilliantovaya ruka
  Movies (1)

  Tonight we finished watching the 1968 film, The Diamond Arm. So how does one make a comedy film about a diamond smuggling ring, complete with slapstick, but in which the police and other authorities all are competent, virtuous and likable people? Believe it or not, it can be done! If you were a filmmaker in Soviet Russia in 1968, you could find a way to do it. Netflix has this description: One of the most beloved Russian comedies, this eccentric farce from celebrated director Leonid Gaidai -- based on a true story he read in the newspaper -- concerns ...
  
  

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