Yuri Vizbor Movies

One of the most popular Soviet TV miniseries of all time, The Seventeen Moments of Spring is a tale of the heroic exploits of a Russian spy in Germany during the last months of World War II. The movie is a battle of wits rather than a regular glamorized spy fare, with a heavy reliance on dialogues and atmosphere. Vyacheslav Tikhonov is quietly convincing as the leading character but the film's popularity owes a lot to its great supporting cast of which Leonid Bronevoy and Oleg Tabakov stand out. ~ Yuri German, Rovi

This Russian psychological drama examines the bitter feelings of World War II veterans confronting the coldness of the postwar world. Four veterans, who have not seen one another since the war, meet for the funeral of a fifth. They discover that though they are all just the same, the world has changed. For most of the film, they discuss the various changes that irk them. In one scene, when one of them has a heart attack, they ask a man with a car to drive them to the hospital with the sick man. The driver refuses in a callous way, and they are so infuriated that they beat him up. This film was very well received by the older generation when it was first screened, and it would appear that it accurately describes the discontents of a whole generation. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This distinguished Russian film stars Inna Churikova, who starred in all of her husband Gleb Panfilov's award-winning films. The fact that she is very ordinary looking lends added piquancy to her fine acting. In this comic romance, she is Pasha, a factory girl who acts in amateur plays in her spare time. In one such play she was seen by a film director who asks her to play the role of Joan of Arc in a film of his. In this story, we see how her private life fails to improve substantially even as her status changes from factory girl to movie star. Large portions of the movie-within-a-movie about Joan of Arc are shown as the story proceeds. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The true story of a tragic 1928 arctic expedition provides the basis for this adventure drama that was a joint Italian and Russian co-production. Peter Finch stars as General Umberto Nobile, who is visited in Rome by the ghosts of those whose lives were taken in his ill-fated mission forty years earlier. In flashback, Nobile recalls the attempt to cross the North Pole by flying dirigible, the Italia. When the airship crashes, Nobile and his crew are scattered across the ice, left to struggle against the freezing cold elements and local polar bears, among other hazards. In an effort to save the expedition, the great explorer Roald Amundsen (Sean Connery), the first man to reach the South Pole, is dispatched to rescue Nobile. When Amundsen disappears (never to be heard from again), an icebreaker is launched to bring national hero Nobile home, but at the expense of his crewmates. Although The Red Tent (1971) was considered a costly box office failure, the film did win a Golden Globe for Best English Language Foreign Film. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

A woman is forced to examine the emptiness of her life in this stark drama from the Soviet Union. Lena (Yevgenya Uralova) is a woman in her late twenties who loves her boyfriend (Aleksandr Belyavsky) but in time comes to see that their relationship serves no useful function. What's more, she sees that her friends are for the most part empty-headed lackeys, causing her to wonder just what is the point of her life. Director Marlen Khutsiev, who previously made the well-received I Am Twenty, displays a strong stylistic debt to Michelangelo Antonioni in this feature, which received one of its few screenings (since its original release in 1967) at the 2000 Locarno Film Festival as part of a retrospective on Soviet filmmaking. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi