Bari2

Good film! Shakurov-Brejnev resembles very much real Brejnev (though it is not difficult to make up everybody to look like Brejnev, taking into consideration his famous brows).

Speaking Pushkin's words 'My soul was charmed again by my lost youth, by a painful sweetness of sadness, and by the first love of my heart'. (I left Russia for ever when Lionya (Brejnev) had been at power).

At his last years Brejnev was a laughing-stock for the people in the USSR. Especially people laughed at his passion for awards. But when I was leaving Russia and went for Sheremetievo (International airport near Moscow) I saw an enormous portrait of Brejnev in the middle of road. He brandished his hand as if saying good-bye. And so he remained for me: the last memory of my native land.

Apropos: there is a goof in the movie. At the scene where Khrushchev was yelling at Brejnev (the year 1947)he shouted: 'Suchiy potroh (impossible to translate), you wanted to make your own VDNH!' (The Exgibition of economical achievements). But that abbreviation was coined only in 1958. So we have here an anachronism.

It is a nice and at the same time sad short animated movie about loneliness in old age. Simpathetic old man Geri has no partner to play chess with except of himself. His chess level is low, and so, naturally of his 'partner's'. It is very touching to see him walking with difficulty to another chair and back. Loosing the game to his alter ego, he makes a little trick simulating the heart attack and by this deflecting his alter ego's attention. When his 'partner' doesn't look at the chessboard, Geri turns the board and triumphantly 'wins' the game. Very pleasant musical score accompanies the movie. It is an early work of the creators of Monster's Inc, and their genius can be seen in it.

For the first time the 'Sun Valley Serenade' was shown in the USSR at the time of WW2. It was never forbidden by the Soviet censorship, so it could be watched in the following years as well.

The film made formidable impression on Soviet citizens. It conjured up 'the American dream' in which the USA appeared as a country where everything is excellent, all women are beautiful, life is extremely easy and cheerful, where money lies on the streets - bend down and take!

Opposite to that paradise picture they saw around them a surly Soviet reality, lack of liberty, empty shops, shabby life in overcrowded communal apartments where people had to stand in turns to get to WC, etc.

Surely, Stalin made a great mistake permitting his subjects to see this film.

A friend of mine watched this film 46 times. Glen Miller became the greatest composer to him. I saw it twice, and at the second time left the cinema long before the end.

That dream about America continued to live in hearts and minds of many people in the Soviet Union. It had been one of the factors which gave birth to the dissident movement, and at the end, made a contribution to the fall of Communism in Russia.

I'm sure that there are some people who participated in creation of the movie who are living now: do they know about their part in the History?

From the point of view of pure art, the rating, I think, is 6 out of 10.