24 Horas em Moscou

Georgiy Daneliya surely must have seen some French films at the time, and the music which is charming reminded me a little of the Italian Nino Rota. It is no masterpiece, but it is a film that deserves a wider viewing. Fortunately YouTube is showing it in widescreen with English subtitles and despite just a touch of propaganda and small reminders of Soviet life it has a free wheeling charm that carries the viewers along. And now I may be a bit controversial. I watched it with a Gay/Queer eye and there is a lot of male eroticism in it. There is even a shower scene which almost opens the film which is a Gay trope in so many Gay films. And as much as I do not respond to Nikita Mikhalkov and his work as a director he makes a handsome lead. But it is Aleksei Loktev who really steals the eye and no doubt the hearts of many as an aspiring Siberian young writer who comes to Moscow to talk to a famous writer. If he had been French he would have brought a lot to French cinema. Along with Evgeniy Steblov as a hesitant young man timid about marriage this makes for a good looking trio with gentle male on male touches ( all of course in the name of comrade friendship ) but if you pause for stills as I did there is a slight romantic edge there. That is my opinion anyway, so any gay person reading this see what you think! There are young women of course and romance there as well, and yet it is the guys who take up most of the film. There is a song at the end when Mikhalkov is in the metro about the undisputed charms of Moscow that could have come out of a Francois Ozon or Christophe Honore film in its male charm. As for the filming it is as good as many a Nouvelle Vague film of the time, and the camera probes and captures the spirit on location of Moscow as it was then. And there is a gentle comedy that pervades the whole scenario that had echoes of certain moments in Louis Malle's ' Zazie dans le metro. ' I will watch this film again as it touches the heart, and there is no rigid formalism, but a lightness of touch that is remarkable and I had the feeling that everyone in it was trying to forget politics and just enjoying what seemed to me a great deal of freedom of life. Not quite a masterpiece, but a very good film.