The Steamroller and the Violin

Tarkovsky's diploma film. It was the graduation project for his course at VGIK, runs forty-six minutes, and received the highest grade available. He co-wrote it with Andrei Konchalovsky, who would become a major director himself. Its second consequence was in the camera department. Tarkovsky's first choice of cinematographer declined, the job went to Vadim Yusov, and Yusov went on to shoot his first three features. The story is simple and lasts one day. A seven-year-old on his way to a violin lesson befriends the man operating the steamroller resurfacing the street outside his building. The man protects him from the other boys, and the boy plays for him. They arrange to go to the cinema that evening. It won first prize at the New York Student Film Festival in 1961. Who it is for: viewers curious about how all of Tarkovsky's motifs, water, mirrors and reflection, first appear in the hands of a young student. Who it is not for: anyone expecting mature Tarkovsky. The film fits the Soviet children's-cinema template, ends optimistically, and lacks the weight of his later work.