Alla Larionova Movies

This Russian-made love story was blessed by Soviet authorities as being entirely wholesome. When Alexei, a struggling and very serious engineer, rescues rich-girl Zhenia from a group of thugs, she is grateful but would have left it at that. Alexei, however, follows up on their acquaintance, and Zhenia forsakes her previous fiancé to marry this stolid young man. Their courtship takes them all over Moscow. After marriage, Zhenia goes to live with Alexei. She is used to the finer things in life, however, and his apartment is extremely tiny and grim. She returns to her parent's home, and he volunteers for a work brigade in the frozen North. One highlight of this film is its very glamorous photography of the city of Moscow. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The Magic Voyage of Sinbad is the American release title for Sadko, an outsized 1952 Russian fantasy film. Based on the Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov opera of the same name, the film details the efforts of seafaring Sadko (Sergei Stolyarov) to rescue the citizens of Covason from their despotic rulers. To do this, he must seek and capture the fabled Bluebird of Happiness (aka The Phoenix). The most fanciful sequence takes place in the undersea domain of King Neptune, which though elaborately staged looks a bit like a special exhibit at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. Though the film is not a musical, the strains of Rimsky-Korsakov are heard throughout, sometimes taken from sources other than Sadko. Alexander Ptushko is credited with the direction on Sadko, though James Landis is cited in some sources as director; in fact, Landis oversaw the recutting and redubbing of the American version, which was distributed in 1962. The scripter for the revamped Magic Voyage of Sinbad was Francis Ford Coppola, but you'd never know it. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi