Cinema: Shostakovich Swings

Song over Moscow, for Western audiences, is a cinematic curio, a satirical Russian musical about young love embattled by status seekers, bureaucratic bumblers and the apartment shortage. Giddy and boisterous, the film gulps down its pill of social realist picture-painting and produces some fascinating side effects. It affords a sly peek behind the Iron Curtain, and seems to take all its bows facing West.

The songs are by Soviet Composer Dmitry Shostakovich, who blithely dissolves ideological conflicts in a burst of tuneful Slavic borsch. Occasionally the Magicolor screen becomes a hotbed of artistic freethinking, dissolving into sets that look very MGMsky, if not downright cubistic. The costumes are a Sears, Roebuck fashion show.

Belting it out are a group of rugged country cousins to the College Swing types that used to save the varsity show in Hollywood musicals of yore. These kids swing in an unfinished Moscow suburb called Cheremushki, “where skies are blue, and dreams come true,” and where an empty flat gets heat in the summertime. “Don’t worry, in the winter it’ll be cold,” quips Boris, a lumpish, curly-topped blaster on the construction crew. With everyone’s dream swaddled in Red tape, and keys to the new flats hard to come by, Boris waltzes around a statuesque museum guide. Sergei, the truck driver, serenades the blue-eyed operator of a giant crane. And one hip-swinging blonde (the Betty Grable part) works her wiles on the doughy bureaucrat she has married to improve her standard of living. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you,” she teases. “But how can I do it in two tiny rooms?” Before virtue triumphs, Moscow establishes itself as a milestone of sorts. Despite its amateur-theatrical air, it shows the refreshing possibilities of Soviet sociology played solely for laughs.