The Carnival Night — 1956
"The Carnival Night" is a Soviet musical film which was released in 1956. It was not only director Eldar Ryazanov's first big-screen film but also the first big-screen role of Soviet singer Lyudmila Gurchenko.
It's New Year's Eve. The employees of an Economics Institute are getting ready to celebrate New Year with their annual program full of dancing, singing and performing magic tricks. But the acting director Ogurtsov doesn't like the program and a few hours before the show he suddenly decides to change it to something more "serious." Obviously, no one agrees with him. And so the fun begins...
One of Russia's most famed and beloved film directors, Eldar Ryazanov, has died in a Moscow hospital from heart failure, the TASS news agency reported Monday. He was 88.
Ryazanov's subtly ironic comedies and piercing dramas marked an era in Soviet cinematography and achieved tremendous popularity with their lighthearted, yet cerebral, sense of humor, gripping reflection of human quirks, and exposure of the oddities of the Soviet regime. Here are his top seven movies, as chosen by The Moscow Times.