Walking the Streets of Moscow

A young writer working in Siberia comes to Moscow for a day. Kolya, a local boy he meets on the metro, shows him the city. A friend leaving for military service the next morning, a girl who works in a record shop, and rain; that is the whole story. Georgiy Daneliya directed, from a script by Gennadiy Shpalikov. Nikita Mikhalkov, who plays Kolya, was eighteen at the time; the film introduced him to Soviet audiences and counts as the start of his career. The narrative is deliberately without incident. The purposeful, message-bearing, heroic structure common in Soviet cinema then is absent; in its place are the run of a day, coincidences and the weather in the city. The song that shares the film's title became a piece almost everyone in the Soviet Union knew. It played in competition at Cannes in 1964. Made toward the end of the Thaw, it is among the lightest and best-loved examples of that short period when films could step away from the official line. Who it is for: viewers who like light, everyday films built on a city. Who it is not for: anyone looking for plot; the film tells almost nothing and means to.