TODAY’S BEST BET: Happy 75th B’day (27/11) to Galina Polskikh! Я шагаю по Москве/Walking the Streets of Moscow (USSR, 1963)(Ch. 1, 06:10) -- > G. Danelia’s classic “Шагаю”/Streets is a wonderful Soviet lyrical comedy that proves, for starters, that the unlikely phrase “Soviet lyrical comedy” was not an oxymoron. This film is a hymn to the possible, and its seemingly incidental opening dialogue – И у вас всё хорошо? - Очень! - А ведь так не бывает! - А вот бывает! (And everything’s just fine with you? – It sure is! – But that never happens! – Well, it’s happening now!) -- was a suitable and touching statement for an entire people/nation that finally seemed on the brink of coming to terms with an uncomfortable past and creating a workable present. Hey, this was 1962-63 – spacemen had just become a reality, young poets were filling stadiums, the “’60s people” were boldly shifting into 2nd gear and Solzhenitsyn’s “Ivan Denisovich” had blown the door off the Forbidden Zone in the arts – and here was an episodic, ambling-around-Moscow movie-picaresque, lighthearted and diverting, featuring three teenagers whose self-evident decency and universally applicable problems-of-youth were believable and amusing respectively. Forget today’s Nikita Mikhalkov (for 73 minutes); the young Nikita, in the lead here, is just terrific – the perfect balance of Tom and Huck with a hint of Ferris Bueller-like modernity – and the ensemble around the three kids (youll note a half-dozen familiar faces) is smoothly and credibly supportive. And the ending dialogue of “Я шагаю” is just as indicative as the opening: the young Kolya/Nikita is walking through a subway station (Universitet, in fact) and starts singing the (impossibly catchy) title song – until he’s brought up short, predictably, by the proverbial scowling official in her best I’m-wearing-a-uniform-and-you’re-not high Soviet dudgeon: Молодой человек, ты чего кричишь?! - Я пою! - Гражданин, иди-ка сюда - спой еще! (So, young man, what’s this shouting?!? – I’m singing! – Citizen, you come here this minute -- sing some more!). You can’t believe it – and yet you sort of do! Hey, it *was* possible… Enough, a must-see, no excuses. Get walking! https://youtube/watch?v=vuEWpdLatLI
Posted on: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 07:17:29 +0000
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