A Girl with Guitar (1958)

A Girl with Guitar (Russian: Девушка с гитарой, romanized: Devushka s gitaroy) is 1958 Soviet musical comedy film directed by Alexander Feinzimmer.

After the success of the film Carnival Night starring Lyudmila Gurchenko the script of the film A Girl with Guitar was written counting on her popularity.

The film was shot on the eve of the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students, held in Moscow in the summer of 1957, and became the first Soviet feature film dedicated to this significant event. The film premiered on September 1, 1958.

The film was a success with the audience. At the end of the year, А Girl with Guitar took the tenth place in the attendance rating, gathering over 31.9 million viewers, although it could not repeat the success of Carnival Night.

Plot

Pretty salesgirl of the music store Tanya Fedosova (Lyudmila Gurchenko) dreams of becoming an actress. She often sings. There are always a lot of customers around her. But they annoy the shop director (Mikhail Zharov), who is afraid of losing a valuable employee. He tries to prevent the possible career of Tanya, who has all the data to become an actress. Acquaintance of the girl with the young composer (Vladimir Gusev) helps her dream to come true.

Cast

According to kino-teatr.ru:

Lyudmila Gurchenko as Tanya Fedosova

Mikhail Zharov as Arkady Sviristinsky

Vladimir Gusev as composer Korzikov

Faina Ranevskaya as Zoya Sviristinskaya

Yuri Nikulin as pyrotechnic

Sergey Blinnikov as Vasily Fedosov, Tanya's father

Boris Petker as Apollon Starobarabantsev

Oleg Anofriev as Vanya Savushkin

Larisa Kronberg as cashier

Sergey Filippov as Mamin

Boris Novikov as Tsyplakov

Mikhail Pugovkin as Penkin

Sergey Golovanov as Kolosov, Chairman of the jury

Svetlana Kharitonova as customer

Georgy Vitsin as buyer

Evgeny Kudryashev as the contestant who told the fable

Valentin Bryleev as buyer (uncredited)

Gigi Marga as singer from Bucharest (uncredited)

Zinaida Sorochinskaya as shopper (uncredited)

Critical reception

Some criticism met the film with hostility:"To the light genre by the... easy way", "In captivity of bad taste" said headlines some Soviet newspapers. Gurchenko gained a reputation the actress of the lung and musical genre.

This film was the debut for Yuri Nikulin. He performed episodic role of the unlucky pyrotechnics so vividly that both the spectators and the directors immediately turned their attention to the novice actor.

The Guardian, described the film as "bouncy, colour musical full of spectacular numbers, in which Gurchenko plays a pretty young clerk in a Moscow music shop, who sings several songs enchantingly".

References

External links

A Girl with Guitar at IMDb