Sentimental Soviet film, with a few affecting moments, about a post-WWII waif who grows up into a one-man campaign to maintain the image of Russian somberness (he's a writer). Most of the film takes place within flashbacks to the immediate postwar period, and it seems at first immured in a postwar filmmaking sensibility, especially perhaps the Italian neo-realist one: a taste for street life, homely faces, lachrymose music. It moves more toward the later Fellini as the young hero develops an interest in mischievous pranks, trumpet solos, nubile women, grotesque grownups (here and everywhere, the casting is founded on looks alone: we know at a glance what we're supposed to think of every character). Directed by Nikolai Gubenko. (1982) — Duncan Shepherd
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