Encyclopedia of Soviet life 70s: 40 years of “Official novel”
26 Oct 40 years ago on the wide screens came melodrama of Eldar Ryazanov’s “Office romance”, which by analogy with the novel “Eugene Onegin” can be called “an encyclopedia of Soviet life the 70s”.
In 1978, the “Office romance” has collected at screens of 58.4 million viewers. Readers of the popular magazine “Soviet screen” named it the best film of 1977, and the lead actors — and Andrey Myagkov Alisa Freindlich — the best actors of the year.
Aify recalls that on the movie wrote the Soviet critics.
From “the Soviet culture” to “the Soviet screen”
By 1977, Eldar Ryazanov has already earned the fame of a Director who knows how to shoot pictures “for all”. Despite the fact that his TV “Irony of fate or With light steam!” failed films, “Office romance” received from the General public the status of the film, not to be missed. A few months before the release of romance criticism has announced her as the next blockbusters.
Recently, E. Ryazanov, together with E. Braginsky finished a new film “Office romance”. As always, the cast in the film in many ways. Starring he took A. Myagkova, which did not want to leave after a “twist of fate”, and A. Freundlich. A wide audience has yet to see this film. And we are not going to precede that certainly joyful meeting a premature review.Maya Turovskaya “Soviet culture”
Shortly after the release of the film on the wide screen in the pages of the magazine “cinema Art” appeared a detailed review V. Mikhalkovich “Pygmalion among us.” The critic analyzed the history of the relationship of the main characters, life in the Soviet collective and the sense of solitude that, even if I wanted to, it is impossible to feel under the “cross-fire from prying eyes” colleagues:
“For many years they exist next to come in the same building at the same time; constantly communicate with each other on various issues-reports, certificates, information; in short, get to know and come closer two colleagues. The strangeness of this story is: people know each other for many years and finally close friends. The film is about precisely that — how is this possible: to know each other and suddenly meet.
The team — through their fifty-cents — directly involved in the birth of a child, and in someone’s fiftieth anniversary, and even death. Nothing, not one intimate incident cannot avoid its interference — direct and, to be honest, annoying. Statistical office and presented Ryazanov — not in your accounting and planning activities, namely in this burning curiosity to all sorts of personal events.
And it turns out that it operates not for the sake of fulfilling some sort of essential professional tasks, and is a single — shigalovism, dvuhsotkratnym — organism intended for the collective experiences of intimate upheavals.
All the more incomprehensible why in an atmosphere of mutual curiosity for so long failed to learn about each other, Ludmila prokofievna Kalugina and Anatoly Efremovich Novoseltsev? The answer is simple and this simplicity is paradoxical: it is because of the atmosphere of curiosity.”
In the Soviet years, the screens out a movie about a modern “Cinderella”, where, together with changes in career or personal life of the heroine was a radical change of her image. However, the “Office romance” in this regard, went even further: the transformation of Alisa Freundlich impressed. In 1984, V. Demin in the book “Eldar Ryazanov” wrote: