Soviet Movies Part II: The Folk Songs
By Bork S. Nerdrum

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The Quote:

High kitsch, whatever else may be said of it, cannot be openly dismissed as cheap.

— Robert C. Solomon, Ph.D.

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One thing that grips more than anything else with the Soviet films of the 1950s is the music and when I say that I am of course talking about the Slavic folk songs!
What is it with these pathetic melodies…
Did it derive from Byzantine Russian liturgy – or is it the result of a heavily suppressed people?
The USSR definitely preferred the last option when they welcomed traditional and “democratic” songs to their proud new nation.

Interestingly – while proletarian mass music lost its appeal after WWII – folkloric music did not which explains why the music that thrived in the golden period of Russian films is not that much tinted with politics.

This scene from the 1964 movie КриницыKrynica(?) shows a bourgeois-girl outsung by her village classmates.

Let me start off by saying that I never thought mockery could be hauntingly beautiful.
The country children seem carefree and happy but their song is just as joyful as it is sad and I cannot find a better word describing it than melancholy.

Folk music from Russian films often introduce one vocal for a starter. On the second verse it is accompanied by another vocal (or a choir) and as the final touch they bring in the orchestra – which never fails to send shivers up my spine!

If anyone is interested there is a good example of this technique in the opening of Quiet Flows the Don (1957).

There are however exceptions to this rule.

In The Fishwives scene from Malva (1957) no orchestra is needed:

Russian folk music does not get much better than this. Listen to the calmness in those voices…
The vocals in russian films are often dry and accompanied by the sounds of fire or by water – as in this scene.

The Ancient Greek concepts of the classical elements never go wrong and the Russians audaciously use them to enhance their movies.

Another example from Sisters / Сестры (1957):


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