Papirosnitsa ot Mosselproma

For the first few years after the Bolsheviks came to power, Soviet cinema was mainly socialist realism. They took a bit of a different spin with Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky's "Papirosnitsa ot Mosselproma" ("The Cigarette Girl from Mosselprom" in English). This light comedy centers on the relationships between a couple of people in Moscow.

I had hoped to see the Russian intertitles, but the version that I watched only had English ones. No matter, it was still a fun movie. Sometimes I wonder what it would've looked like had the Soviet Union made horror movies or over-the-top slapstick comedies. Hell, I would've liked to see a Soviet mix of live-action and animation (like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit").

This is a movie, which I consider to be nearly perfect. The characters are endearing and believable, and the plot ties up nicely.

Zina is the beautiful cigarette girl, who is discovered by the cameraman, Latugin, and becomes an actress. Latugin loves Zina. Mac-Bride loves Zina. Mityushin loves Zina. The land lady loves Mityushin. Zina loves Latugin. Zina, Latugin, and Mityushin loose their jobs. What will happen?

This is essentially a comedy. There is a mixtures of restrained slapstick and humorous love mix ups. Some of it has been done before (well you will have seen it before), but the movie is original enough and very well done.

There are still some weird bits to this. For example when Nikodim Mityushin smokes the cigarette the hall starts spinning. Hmmm, I donÕt think that was tobacco in there.

I highly recommend watching this, even if you are not into silent film.

This pleasant, entertaining, self-deprecating comedy is worth seeing both in itself and as one of the very earliest Soviet-era Russian comedy movies. It has an array of sympathetic, if silly, characters, and a story that creates some amusing predicaments and that also provides some interesting self-referential commentary.

The center of it all is Zina, "The Cigarette Girl of Mosselprom", played by a good-natured Julia Solntseva. She gets involved in a number of romantic mix-ups at the same time that she starts a budding acting career. Most of the story is very light, and it never takes itself seriously. At the same time, the humorous look at film-making works quite well. There is one particularly good sequence, which begins with one of Zina's admirers watching her precariously atop a bridge, that nicely ties together several of the movie's themes.

Much of what makes this work is that it treats almost all of the characters sensitively, even when they behave foolishly. Who could not sympathize with Nikodim when he buys things he doesn't need, just to be close to the girl he adores? Who cannot feel empathy for Maria's loneliness, or Latugin's dreams? None of them behave with any particular degree of intelligence, but that just makes them human.

The movie is well-crafted for the most part, and it makes good use of its resources. Aside from Solntseva, the acting is at times just a bit over-the-top, but the cast makes their characters believable and human. As a whole it works well, providing a pleasant comic look at human nature, at movie-making, and at the everyday life of its own time and place.