Sergei Komarov Movies

Compared to the somberly serious Russian films being released in the U.S. after WW II, the lighthearted The Train Goes East must have seemed like a breath of fresh air. The story begins on VJ day in August of 1945. Celebrating the victory, navy captain Lavrentyev (Leonid Gallis) sets his sights on romance, with pretty agricultural expert Sokolova (Lydia Dranovskaya) his willing target. Missing their train home, the captain and Sokolova are forced to find any available means of transportation, leading to a series of gently amusing situations. Along the way, the budding romance is threatened by the sort of mutual misunderstandings one usually finds in Hollywood screwball comedies. Train Goes East was the latest in a series of frothy concoctions by popular Russian filmmaker Yuri Raizman, who ironically had begun his career turning out such grimly realistic efforts as Forced Labor (1928) and The Earth Thirsts (1930). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The Patriots is set in a Russian provincial village during World War I. Hans Klering plays a German prisoner of war, put to work in the village's cobbler shop. The film takes its sweet time articulating the relationship between the prisoner and his largely benign captors. Patriots is essentially a plea for tolerance; being a Russian film of the 1930s, of course, there are none more tolerant than the Soviets. A bilingual production (Russian and German), The Patriots is available on video in an English-subtitled version. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This engaging comedy of manners from celebrated Soviet director Boris Barnet finds a young peasant woman (Vera Maretskaya) traveling to Moscow to start a new life. She takes a job as a servant for a oily barber and his wife who live in a crowded tenement. Satirical jabs are taken at bourgeois society and urban problems like labor-union parades, housing shortages, and the crowded conditions of the city. The House On Trubnaya Square was one of the most important Soviet films of the 1920s but was not viewed by western audiences until 60 years after it was released. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

The title of this Russian comedy may seem misleading; well, it is, but only slightly. While on a goodwill visit to the Soviet Union in 1926, silent film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks made a tour of the movie studios. Here, Ms. Pickford was prevailed upon to briefly participate in the making of a film. In the spirit of glasnost (though that wasn't what they called it back then) she agreed; following directions, she walked over to an actor she'd never met before and planted a kiss on his cheek. With this brief vignette in the can, director Sergei Komarov constructed a feature-length farce about a nebbishy young man who has no luck with the ladies. But once he's kissed by Mary Pickford, he virtually has to beat off his throngs of adoring female admirers with a stick! Inasmuch as Mary Pickford was perhaps the best-known woman in the world, her fleeting contribution to A Kiss From Mary Pickford enabled the film to rake in the rubles for many years to come. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi