Small Miracles: Soviet Holiday
Movie Kinda-Classics
It’s
no secret that Russians
disproportionately adore the New
Year. At least we used to, back
in Brezhnev’s early ’80s, when
it was the only truly private
holiday aside from one’s
birthday: intimate,
all-inclusive, apolitical,
non-denominational. The New Year
meant a clean break, a new
beginning, the promise of a
miracle. Year after year, it
followed the same unshakable
formula: large table spread
awkwardly in the middle of the
living room, fir tree in the
corner, oxymoronic “Soviet
Champagne,” presents, frantic
midnight calls to the
long-distance kin… and the
triumvirate of classic Soviet
holiday movies alternating on
the muted TV. Here they are. If
this year, watching a
wisecracking angel get his wings
yet again feels
especially old, try swapping old
Capra out for one of these
three.
The Carnival Night (1956)
The
storyline is perfect in its
simplicity. It is New Year’s Eve
of 1957, and workers are
gathering at their factory’s
Palace of Culture for a night of
dancing and cutting-edge
entertainment (jazz!) lovingly
assembled by “activists” Lena
and Grisha. At the eleventh
hour—literally—the fusty old
director of the facilities
orders them to substitute the
planned concert with a boring
propaganda piece. Our young
heroes save the night by
distracting the bureaucrat and
sabotaging the state-approved
performances. The show goes on,
fun is had by all, and Lena and
Grisha manage to find love along
the way.
The Miracle: the film
satirizes the Party bureaucracy
without even coming close to
criticizing the untouchable
Soviet ideals.
The
Irony of Fate (or Enjoy the
Steam) (1975)
This one is a touching romantic
comedy. Our hero, Yevgeny, is
meeting his friends for their
annual pre-New Year gathering at
the sauna. Yevgeny has a lot to
celebrate: he just got engaged
and moved into a new apartment
in the outskirts of Moscow.
Which only partially explains
how he manages to get himself
sufficiently drunk to mistakenly
board a plane, black out during
the flight, and awaken in the
streets of Leningrad, without
realizing he is in a different
city. Nursing a monstrous
hangover, he hails a cab, gives
the driver his Moscow address,
arrives at a nondescript
apartment building not unlike
his own, stumbles in (the key
works!), undresses and falls
asleep. Upon awakening, he finds
“his” stylish East German
furnishings slightly rearranged,
but does not give it much
thought until the true owner of
the apartment, a gorgeous
blonde, arrives with her
boyfriend, and hilarity ensures.
The titular irony thus is not
that these poor people live in
uniform faceless apartment
buildings with generic
addresses, possessions and
keyholes, but in the notion that
two of those people might be
true soulmates.
The Miracle: the film
satirizes drabness of the
“central planning” live without
passing judgment on Russian men.
The
Wizards (1982)
The
plot takes place at the Research
Institute of Magical Events—an
organization not unlike the
Ministry of Magic of the Harry
Potter films, but with only the
cross-fade effect to provide for
actual displays of wizardry. The
senior executive witch,
crumbling under the pressures of
maintaining a healthy
career/life balance, succumbs to
the scheming of her VP Sataneyev
(clearly a diabolical figure)
and puts a hex on a younger
professional witch. The hexed
witch forgets the fiancé waiting
for her in Moscow, goes out with
Sataneyev, and puts all her
energy into disciplining her
subordinates and organizing the
office New Year party. The
gargantuan supporting cast
spends their allocated onscreen
time wandering endless corridors
and decrepit labs of the
Institute (filmed in the Central
Television offices, infamous for
periodically swallowing up
talk-show guests without a
trace) and periodically breaking
into disco song and dance
routines, while the forgotten
fiancé concentrates all his
efforts on braving holiday
traffic. Will airport delays
jeopardize his only shot at true
love?
The Miracle: that the
film did not flop.
Of course, if you are spending
this New Year’s Eve in Russia
(and why wouldn’t you?), your
entertainment choices are not
limited to the reruns of these
oldies. Newly nationalized TV
plus a steady influx of oil
money multiplied by countrywide
nostalgia equals big-budget
remakes and sequels. The remake
of The Carnival Night
even has the same director,
Eldar Ryazanov, who either has a
gambling problem or grandkids
hitting private-school age. The
storyline goes all meta—a film
crew wants to film a remake of
The Carnival Night, but
the Palace of Culture they chose
for their location is about to
be converted to luxury condos or
some such. The crew manages to
postpone the commercialization
of culture, and the filming goes
on… A sequel to The Irony of
Fate has a simpler
concept—the heroes of the
original, as it turns out, do
not stay together. They retreat
to their respective cities,
marry their old partners and
have children. One of these
children suffers an
alcohol-induced episode, misses
his plane, believes that he
already disembarked in a
different city, etc. As for
The Wizards, its director,
Konstantin Bromberg, lives in
Detroit—happily, he says. Now
there’s a miracle.
