Andrei Konchalovsky takes a refreshing route into darkest Russia -- via the unique experience of Stalin's personal film projectionist -- though he doesn't evade thereby the broadest irony and broadest pathos, not to mention the broadest acting and broadest Russian accent (Tom Hulce's). The screenings themselves (Duvivier's The Great Waltz goes over big), a small fraction of a long movie, are meticulously detailed; and the location shooting, inside the Kremlin and elsewhere, injects some documentary starch. The finale at Stalin's funeral would seem to have been tailor-made for a Russian director (1500 trampled to death), but they don't make those like they used to. Or anyway they didn't make Konchalovsky like Eisenstein: a military truck is twice rocked onto two wheels, a boot comes down on a pair of eyeglasses, and a printed epilogue fills in what happened next. Lolita Davidovich, Bob Hoskins. (1991) — Duncan Shepherd
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