Word: mikhalkov
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Directed by Nikita Mikhalkov...
Screenplay by Friedrich Gorenstein and Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky...
There is much to admire in Director Nikita Mikhalkov's rendering of this tale. He has shot the movie in summery, impressionistic colors that well evoke the end of imperial Russia. His comic vignettes about the early days of his country's film industry are reminiscent of old-time Hollywood lore, right down to the portrayal of temperamental screenwriters and cost-conscious producers. Slave even has a character who is a Russian equivalent of American Silent-Era Star John Gilbert: a dashing leading man whose speaking voice is disconcertingly high-pitched...
Though the film's show-biz types remain ineffectual to the end, Mikhalkov refuses to poke fun at them. More often he is touched by their plight-especially that of Olga, the movie troupe's star actress. Olga barrels through real-life matters of love, death and conscience in the same florid manner as in her on-screen roles, yet she is more tragic than foolish. As played by Yelena Solovey, an actress of impressive range, this heroine's helpless indecisiveness sometimes achieves Chekhovian dimensions...
...hands at following the vagaries of the party line, Mikhalkov and El-Registan had little trouble in composing a deft change in the banned stanza about Stalin. The new last lines...