Aleksey Glazyrin

Belorusskiy vokzal (1971)
Moscow, the Soviet Union. Summer of 1956 – eleven years after Hitler Nazis were defeated and buried. Four red army veterans met again at another comrade’s funeral. Aleksei, a writer. Viktor, a factory boss. Nikolai, an accountant. And Ivan, a mechanic. All graying and coping with post war life as best as they could. After the funeral, Nikolai invited his friends to go to his place. They experienced quite a few unexpected adventures on their way, including a bit of time in police custody…and ended up getting another comrade involved in the unplanned reunion. Reference of Belorusskiy Railway Station doesn’t happen until the last minute of the film. That’s where the victorious soldiers returned from war in the Spring of 1945.Read More »

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A sympathetic, emotionally persuasive drama describing the friendship of four World War II veterans, their sudden reunion after 25 years and the subsequent effect of this occasion upon their thoughts and evaluations of the past and present. In a way, The Byelorussian Station is reminiscent of the poignant, realistic look at the returned soldier remembered in Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives. In this film, however, the sentiments are leavened by reminiscence and a touch of remorse, and the spectator must be prepared for a deeply moving cinematic adventure. Read More »

This Russian film adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s story was for a long time the only horror film made in the Soviet Union. Khoma (Leonid Kuravlev), a young novice, travels across the countryside and stays for a night in a barn that belongs to an ugly old woman. When she attacks him at night and takes him for a broom ride, the scared novice fatally wounds her, and before she dies, she turns into a beautiful young noblewoman (Natalya Varley). The latter leaves a will, according to which Khoma should pray for her for three nights in the chapel until her body is buried. At night, the witch rises from the coffin and tries to catch Khoma. She flies around but she can’t reach him or see him because he stays inside the circle that he has drawn around himself. During the third and last night, the witch makes the last attempt to scare him out of the circle, and she calls all sorts of ugly creatures to help her… Gogol wrote several stories based on Ukrainian folklore, many of them dealing with the Devil and the supernatural. ~ Yuri German, All Movie GuideRead More »