Vladimir Mikhaylov

The life of a characters of this movie can be described as a swing - up and down, up and down; each day, each week...

Working with children led Barskaya to create superb direct sound and an inspired style of shooting. Don’t look for conventional cinematic syntax here. The film is chaotic in the way that Soviet films still knew how to be, and Langlois couldn’t help but be seduced by its rebellious spirit, its anarchy and love of children, comparable to Vigo’s Zero de conduite. As well as being a film made with and for children, it offers a complex take on Western society. Pre-Nazi Germany is not named as such but is carefully reconstructed, possibly under advice from Karl Radek, and children offer a playful reflection of class struggle – doubly excluded, as proletarians and as minors. “They play in the same way that they live”, one intertitle says. The interaction between their comical games and the yet more ludicrous ones played by adults is developed on several levels.

The priests, stock market officials, and police conspire to squeeze income out of pilgrims come to see relics of a Christ like figure. A pair of con men try to pass of a resurrected saint.

In the peaceful countryside, Vassily opposes the rich kulaks over the coming of collective farming.

The vain station master of a Russian train station out in the sticks has a quarrel with an old peasant woman and has her thrown in jail. The local party youth organisation finally manage to get her released, after having to cut through lots of red tape.

Young and beautiful girl, lives near Moscow, earning a making hats for the fashion store in Moscow. Due to the requirements of the Soviet government on standards of living space, the store owner has to prescribe it fictitiously in his apartment. But on the train she meets a young boy, and the housing problem changes their lives.

History of theft and double crossing when two thieves fall out over the theft of the money of the proceeds of the sale of a house by a banker to a religious community.