Anastasia Vertinskaya Movies

Popular Russian actor Mikhail Kozakov directed this romantic comedy set in a small provincial town where the main cultural attraction is a glimpse of a fast train going by. One day, something extraordinary happens, as the train stops and a worldly, elegant woman from a big city steps off. That woman, Mona (Anastasiya Vertinskaya), has no ticket, and the station master insists that she must buy one. She has no money, and there are no trains until tomorrow, so she ends up staying at the house of local schoolteacher Marin Miroiu (Igor Kostolevsky). Miroiu, who teaches astronomy, claims to have discovered a previously unknown star. At first, Mona dislikes the bookish schoolteacher, but gradually the two fall in love. Their idyll is interrupted by the arrival of Mona's wealthy lover (Mikhail Kozakov), who wants to take her back to city life. ~ Yuri German, All Movie Guide

This light comedy is taken from the Claude Tiller novel "My Uncle Benjamin", a family favorite of director Georgi Daneliya. Benjamin (Vakhtang Kikabidze) is the young physician who leads a carefree life. He and his friends drink and dance at the local tavern and take pleasure in the butcher's wife. Levan (S. Zakariadze) is the older doctor who wants Benjamin to marry his daughter, but she runs away with an Army officer. The worried father asks Benjamin to find his daughter and bring her home. He finds her but she dies while giving birth to a child, and the officer is killed in a dual. Benjamin returns with the baby to his hometown, where he is saddened to learn of Levan's demise. At the funeral, Levan watches his family and friends for the last time before he really dies. His last wish is fulfilled as he sees the people who are close to him one last time. This is the only film by Daneliya that is set entirely in his native country of Georgia. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Russian director Sergei Bondarchuk's epic version of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (Voyna i Mir) was the most expensive European film ever made for many years. It certainly had one of the longest gestation periods, with Bondarchuk spending seven years filming the project (the actors noticeably age from scene to scene). In relating Tolstoy's complex tale of Napoleon's invasion of Russia, Bondarchuk helmed some of the most graphic battle scenes ever seen, one of which runs nearly 45 minutes. So many horses were killed in these sequences that the film was loudly boycotted in some American cities by the ASPCA. While Bondarchuk is slavish to the source material, he does make a few Hollywood-like concessions to popular appeal; his leading lady Lyudmila Savelyeva looks exactly like Audrey Hepburn, the star of King Vidor's 1956 filmization of the Tolstoy novel. Originally clocking in at 507 minutes, War and Peace was pared down to 373 minutes for American consumption. It became a surprise theatrical hit, and a ratings bonanza when it was telecast on the ABC network in four parts from August 12 through 15, 1972. A big film, to be sure -- but few modern critics consider Bondarchuk's War and Peace a great film, citing its many deadly dull passages and its sappy, operatic finale. The dubbed American version is narrated by Norman Rose. The full Russian-language version with English subtitles is now available on video. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This immensely popular science fiction film is taken from the novel by Russian author Alexander Belyayev. A scientist has turned his son into an amphibious creature. Ikhtiandr Vladimir Korenev frightens the superstitious pearl divers of the mythical Latin country as he lurks in his underwater world. Ikhtiadr falls in love with the beautiful fisherman's daughter Guttiere Marianna Vertinskaya after he saves her from a shark attack. When she marries a despicable diver, Ikhtiandr leaves his liquid life behind to walk on land. His time on land is limited and he must eventually return to the water to survive. Evil villains try to kill him by making sure he does not return to the safety of the water. Korenev was a popular Russian heartthrob and for years had a dedicated following of enamored female fans. Marianna Vertinskaya later went on to place Ophelia in the brilliantly produced Russian version of Hamlet. She continues to be one of Russia's most respected theater actresses. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Veteran Russian character actor Nikolai Cherkasov plays the noble but befuddled title character in this Soviet adaptation of Don Quixote. Yuri Tolubeyev co-stars as Sancho Panza -- and if Sancho sounds a bit like Sherlock Holmes' Dr. Watson at times, it is because his voice was dubbed for the English-language version by Howard Marion-Crawford, who portrayed Watson on the 1954 TV series Sherlock Holmes. The film follows the path laid out three centuries earlier by Miguel de Cervantes, stopping short of Cervantes' original ending, which intimated that Quixote would never die (this was not in keeping with Communist ideology of the period). In this version, Quixote jousts with imaginary giants and mistakes milkmaids for aristocrats against the backdrop of the Crimea, standing in for the hills of Spain. Filmed in 1957, Don Quixote was not released in the U.S. until 1961 due to the heating up of the Cold War. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide