CARNIVAL NIGHT — great tip, Zack, thanks! My wife and I watched it last night!
I highly recommend this 1956 Comedy, just 75 minutes, available on YouTube. Here are some thoughts on it:
The plot is minimal. A host of characters are organizing a New Year's Eve ball celebration. The organizers are creative and spirited, and have a lot in store for the crowd. Their Soviet superior, however, seeing reheearsals, resists the spirited, lighthearted, sometimes too-daring entertainments that are planned for the evening. The whole plot is how the organizers manage to pull off a great evening without ever directly challenging or confronting the superior. Conflict is avoided by ruses, sometimes ones that make the superior the unwitting object of comedy. That's it. There are minor and ordinary budding-romance subplots. Everything turns out well, a delightful carnival-like celebration, and budding romances.
While watching, my wife and I were delighted by the charm and entertainment, including the musical numbers; the colors and photography made me think of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which was not made until 1964. But we kept expecting some more definite plot to thicken. Once I realized that foiling the superior and having a joyous time was all the plot I was going to get, I fully appreciate the movie. After viewing, upon reflection, I realized that Soviet viewers in 1956 may have realized right away that that plot was quite enough.
All in all, I was simply surprised that the 1956 Soviet authorities allowed the movie to be made and watched (it was the box-office leader of Soviet films for 1956). As Zack said, this wasn't Stalinist Russia. It was "the Khrushchev Thaw." The comic playing the superior was superb, and pretty much all of the characters were charming. The rating at IMDB for the film is 7.4.
CARNIVAL NIGHT — great tip, Zack, thanks! My wife and I watched it last night!
I highly recommend this 1956 Comedy, just 75 minutes, available on YouTube. Here are some thoughts on it:
The plot is minimal. A host of characters are organizing a New Year's Eve ball celebration. The organizers are creative and spirited, and have a lot in store for the crowd. Their Soviet superior, however, seeing reheearsals, resists the spirited, lighthearted, sometimes too-daring entertainments that are planned for the evening. The whole plot is how the organizers manage to pull off a great evening without ever directly challenging or confronting the superior. Conflict is avoided by ruses, sometimes ones that make the superior the unwitting object of comedy. That's it. There are minor and ordinary budding-romance subplots. Everything turns out well, a delightful carnival-like celebration, and budding romances.
While watching, my wife and I were delighted by the charm and entertainment, including the musical numbers; the colors and photography made me think of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which was not made until 1964. But we kept expecting some more definite plot to thicken. Once I realized that foiling the superior and having a joyous time was all the plot I was going to get, I fully appreciate the movie. After viewing, upon reflection, I realized that Soviet viewers in 1956 may have realized right away that that plot was quite enough.
All in all, I was simply surprised that the 1956 Soviet authorities allowed the movie to be made and watched (it was the box-office leader of Soviet films for 1956). As Zack said, this wasn't Stalinist Russia. It was "the Khrushchev Thaw." The comic playing the superior was superb, and pretty much all of the characters were charming. The rating at IMDB for the film is 7.4.