Eldar Ryazanov Movies

This Russian romantic comedy drama with satirical overtones serves as an ideal vehicle for the effervescent talents of Tatiana Dogileva. She portrays a nurse with whom bureaucrat Leonid Filatov falls in love after having a heart problem. Director Eldar Ryazanov doesn't seem to know when best to end a scene, thus inflating a charming comic idea well past its worth at times. Fortunately, the focus throughout is on Ms. Dogileva, who can make even the dullest scene come vibrantly to life. A Forgotten Tune for the Flute was one of the earliest movie arrivals in the US after the fall of Communism; more of the same, please! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this lengthy romantic comedy, a married pianist runs away from a traffic accident and seeks refuge at an enormous railroad station where he experiences a string of bad luck. But the pianist also meets an older waitress (Lyudmila Gurchenko and the two -- after a long preamble -- start a romance of sorts. A certain amount of satire on the social system and its foibles, as well as slightly erotic segments, and the acerbic train conductor played by Nikita Mikhalkov (an Academy Award-winning director) are a surprise in this otherwise routine interlude at a train station. This was a popular film when released in the USSR because of the two lead actors, but it does not quite come up to the previous standards of director Eldar Ryazanov. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This modestly budgeted, made-for-TV romantic comedy became one of the most popular films in the former Soviet Union and a staple of TV broadcasts on New Year's Eve. It's based on the premise that modern apartment complexes look so much alike that one cannot distinguish one city from another. On New Year's Eve, Muscovite Yevgeny Lukashin (Andrei Myagkov) finally dares to make a marriage proposal to Galya (Olga Naumenko). They plan to celebrate the New Year together quietly, but Lukashin's friends convince him that first he should attend their annual meeting at a bathhouse. The meeting quickly turns into an improvisational bachelor party for Yevgeny. Having consumed large amounts of alcohol, they cannot remember which one of them was supposed to fly to Leningrad to meet his wife. So they put the sleepy Lukashin on a plane. Upon his arrival in the Leningrad airport, Yevgeny gives the taxi driver his Moscow street address and the cab takes him to an apartment complex located on a street with the same name. The building looks very much like his own, so Lukashin, still not quite sober, does not realize that he is in another city. He enters someone else's apartment because his key fits the door lock and he quickly falls asleep on a couch. When the apartment's rightful resident, Nadya (Polish actress Barbara Brylska), comes home, she wakes up the intruder and tells him to get out. The bewildered Yevgeny insists that he is at home and she is the one who should get out. Eventually he sobers and finds out about his predicament. He is about to leave when the situation is further complicated by the arrival of Nadya's straight-laced fiancé Ippolit (Yuri Yakovlev) who does not believe in Lukashin's story and accuses Nadya of being unfaithful. The interaction between the three characters results in Nadya and Yevgeny's gradual falling in love with each other. ~ Yuri German, Rovi

In this Russian comedy, a thief (Innokenti Smoktunovsky) becomes a sort of Robin Hood by stealing the cars of unpunished criminals, selling them and donating the cash to an orphanage. He is eventually captured by an investigator (Oleg Yefremov) who also happens to be performing with the robber in an amateur production of Hamlet. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This musical comedy takes place during the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. Young woman Shura (Larisa Golubkina) decides to teach her boorish, braggadocio suitor Rzhevsky (Yuri Yakovlev) a lesson in humility by dressing herself as a man, joining the army and becoming a hero. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi