Visokosnyy god

Leap Year (1962) is a curious assemblage of visual tropes and clichés from Italian neorealism, refracted through the lens of Soviet Thaw-era filmmaking. While it was clearly not designed for international distribution, the film nonetheless rides the lingering wave of The Cranes Are Flying (1957)-leaning heavily on bold expressive photography and striking lighting choices. Only here, everything feels not exactly bold but, to borrow (anachronistically) from Susan Sontag, "'bold'": a self-conscious imitation of intensity rather than the real thing.

Sontag's essay On Camp appeared in the West only a couple of years after this film's release, and obviously there's no direct line of influence. But one can imagine her weariness with the standardized "neorealist/new wave" aesthetics of the postwar era, which films like Leap Year dutifully replicate from behind the Iron Curtain.

As a piece of cinema history, however, Leap Year has its uses. For anyone teaching Soviet film, it offers a compact anthology of visual tropes and recurring screenwriting themes, gathered neatly into a single work. It is also undeniably "off the beaten path." The one drawback is the director's compulsive reliance on Dutch angles, which-after a while-leaves the audience's head spinning just a little too much.