La Vendeuse de cigarettes de Mosselprom

This pleasant, entertaining, self-deprecating comedy is worth seeing both in itself and as one of the very earliest Soviet-era Russian comedy movies. It has an array of sympathetic, if silly, characters, and a story that creates some amusing predicaments and that also provides some interesting self-referential commentary.

The center of it all is Zina, "The Cigarette Girl of Mosselprom", played by a good-natured Julia Solntseva. She gets involved in a number of romantic mix-ups at the same time that she starts a budding acting career. Most of the story is very light, and it never takes itself seriously. At the same time, the humorous look at film-making works quite well. There is one particularly good sequence, which begins with one of Zina's admirers watching her precariously atop a bridge, that nicely ties together several of the movie's themes.

Much of what makes this work is that it treats almost all of the characters sensitively, even when they behave foolishly. Who could not sympathize with Nikodim when he buys things he doesn't need, just to be close to the girl he adores? Who cannot feel empathy for Maria's loneliness, or Latugin's dreams? None of them behave with any particular degree of intelligence, but that just makes them human.

The movie is well-crafted for the most part, and it makes good use of its resources. Aside from Solntseva, the acting is at times just a bit over-the-top, but the cast makes their characters believable and human. As a whole it works well, providing a pleasant comic look at human nature, at movie-making, and at the everyday life of its own time and place.