Soundtrack as liberalising strategy

Unlike the music industry, cinema was actually subject to a double process of censorship since filmmakers had to comply with the requirements and resolutions of both the State Committee for Cinematography (Goskino) and the official censorship organ (Glavlit).Footnote ¹ Thus, restrictions in filmmaking had a more centralized and unforgiving structure than other cultural sectors, with ‘a furcated network of inspectors … which perform[ed] control over a film's demonstration and [the] expunging of prohibited films’ (Golovskoi Reference Golovskoi1986, p. 158). Knowing of these problems in advance, Stagnation-era filmmakers often tended towards self-censorship during the production process. As Olga Klimova explains in her dissertation on Brezhnev-era youth films:

The existence of a dynamic, multi-tiered censorship system necessarily affected the way in which films were conceived, produced and distributed. Within this complex ecosystem, music was an important factor contributing to how filmmakers could express themselves and connect with audiences despite bureaucratic obstructions.

This article will explore the use of popular music in two prominent movies that embody this tension: The Twelve Chairs (Двенадцать стульев, 1971, dir. Leonid Gaidai) and The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath! (Ирония судьбы, или с легким паром!, 1975, dir. El'dar Riazanov). These films – selected owing to their immense popularity and representative usage of Aesopian language as ‘winks’ to a knowing audience – demonstrate how Soviet popular music fitted into a complex and multi-faceted relationship of minor liberties and major limits.Footnote ² Taking previously existing scholarship one step farther, these case studies will use musical and textual analysis to understand how popular music is used both diegetically and non-diegetically in these films – in one case, to help sublimate the grief and trauma of a repressive system into an energetic, appealing kinetic narrative, and in the other, to create a sense of apolitical intimacy with the viewer, encouraging the development of a subjectivity existing outside of the Soviet system. In both cases, post-Soviet philosopher and art theorist Keti Chukhrov's notion of ‘the non-cinema of Soviet film’ is subverted as Gaidai and Riazanov create a space for their audiences to shed affiliation with the Soviet socialist agenda, and instead, to simply exist in a space akin to Alexei Yurchak's concept of vnye. Footnote ³ In order to understand the relationship of these films to the Soviet music industry, I will also highlight and examine the composers who scored them, as well as explore some of the cinematic and musical tactics that emerge in the complicated nexus among sound (composer), vision (director), and speech (text).

Consumption

Film in the USSR, as elsewhere around the globe, was an important influence in the socialization and communicative development of young people. Sergei Zhuk reports:

As with Soviet popular music, fans of cinema liked and used this art form in order to imagine an idealized and fetishized West. In 1973 alone, Soveksportfilm (the federal agency in charge of acquiring and distributing foreign films) bought more than 150 feature films from 70 countries. Some, like the wildly popular Czech movie Lemonade Joe, came from closer to home. Yet the most sought-after films were American, British or German (My Darling Clementine (1946) and Mackenna's Gold (1969) were most popular around this time).Footnote ⁴ Although this foreign influence worried Soviet ideologists – KGB operatives ‘constantly complained about the negative role of ‘films from the West’ that ‘transformed a spiritual world’ of the Soviet youth and ‘polluted the pure soul of the Soviet child with alien ideas and dangerous expectations’ (Zhuk Reference Zhuk2010, p. 126) – audiences ate it up.

In a world of humourless ideology, the best-received Soviet movies tended to be adventurous and lighthearted. The eccentric comedies of Leonid Gaidai and El'dar Riazanov – the two directors examined here – became enormously popular.Footnote ⁵ The import of these works can still be felt today: Gaidai's 1969 comedic film The Diamond Arm [Бриллиантовая рука], which sold over 76 million tickets, would become the third most popular Soviet film of all time, and remains widely known by Russian speakers of all ages (Ibid, p. 125). These wildly successful homegrown comedies were able to hold their own in a domain where anything foreign was automatically more interesting to Soviet citizens. So how did these films manage both to get official approval and hold Hollywood at bay?

Soviet laughter, Soviet tears

It is unsurprising that comedy/satire would become such a celebrated and beloved genre in the Soviet Union, since these kinds of works are a fine vehicle for secondary, hidden significances. Nods, winks, double entendres and concealed meanings became an art form in themselves. These patterns of clever, concealed double-talk would enable multifaceted readings of much Soviet creative output, and ultimately fuel the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of Russian comedy (MacFadyen Reference MacFadyen2003, p. 5).

Narratives meant different things in different periods of Soviet life. In the movie world, ‘proper’ comedy shifted between Khrushchev and Brezhnev from an introspective, verbally dexterous mode into more physical, knockabout forms. That same shift colours the mid-career films of Leonid Gaidai (1923–1993) such as Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures (1965), Kidnapping Caucasian Style (1966) and the aforementioned hit The Diamond Arm (1969). The main character of this film – average Soviet citizen Semion Gorbunkov – finds himself in an amusing yet potentially frightening situation when, after injuring his arm during a trip abroad, he is unwittingly forced to smuggle diamonds back into the Soviet Union inside his plaster cast. In her analysis, Klimova notes ‘a parallel between the film's narrative and the situation in the country when the government was constantly taking advantage of common Soviet citizens’ (Klimova Reference Klimova2013, pp. 45–6).

This brief reading of an incredibly popular Soviet movie allows us to glimpse the kinds of expressive possibilities filmmakers were able to carve out in a sphere where they still relied on the government for most, if not all, of their resources. These possibilities were enabled by allegory and other Aesopian gestures, expanding and creating layers within a film's meaning, while simultaneously reducing the number of ‘knowing’ viewers. The Diamond Arm gets away with its portrayal of foreigners and criminals by treating those characters in an overtly satirical way and making sure everything ends on the right side of the law, yet simultaneously evokes the ambivalent space of Yurchak's ‘border zones between here and elsewhere’. In this way, Gaidai and other directors proficient in Aesopian communication avoided succumbing to the bland ‘non-cinema of Soviet film’ discussed by Chukhrov (Reference Chukhrov2020).

Visual techniques can also play a big part in relaying or complicating a film's narrative, operating in tandem with verbal cues and regular dialogue:

Aside from and parallel to these fundamental tactics, many pictures in Soviet cinema during this period of ‘developed socialism’ relied on subtler Aesopian strategies drawn from literature, as suggested by Russian poet and scholar Lev Loseff (Reference Loseff1984). These also came in different flavours: allegory, parody, periphrasis, ellipsis, quotation, shift, reductio ad absurdum and non sequitur. Film employed these techniques as part and parcel of its own signifying system; an allegory could be communicated through montage, camera angles, intertitles, choice of actors – and, of course, diegetic and non-diegetic music and sounds. Before considering the soundscapes of Gaidai's feature The Twelve Chairs, however, let us examine the ways in which its screenplay is representative of Soviet comedy more broadly.

The Twelve Chairs

By the early 1970s, Ilya Il'f and Yevgeny Petrov's 1928 novel The Twelve Chairs had already been adapted multiple times for the screen by directors worldwide, starting with a 1933 Czech adaptation, followed by two Anglophone versions, a 1954 production from Sweden, a Cuban film from 1962, and others. Even American director Mel Brooks, famous for film farces and comedic parodies, had a go at the Odessan authors’ classic satire in 1970. Published at the tail end of NEP (Lenin's more capitalism-oriented New Economic Policy), the book and its companion, ‘The Golden Calf’, ‘were an instant and nearly universal hit with Soviet audiences and beyond (Vinokour Reference Vinokour2015, p. 334).Footnote ⁶ Even though the novel's narrative relies heavily on its unique, politically confusing setting – post-revolutionary Russia of the late 1920s – the core theme of human greed easily transcends nationality and cultural specificity, making it easy to adapt for multiple marketplaces.

A hunt for pre-revolutionary wealth hidden from the Bolsheviks in the upholstery of some furniture, ‘The Twelve Chairs’ is framed by the relationship of its two central characters. Entrepreneurial and street-smart Ostap Bender is referred to as ‘the great operator’. He cunningly partners with former nobleman Ippolit ‘Kisa’ Vorobianinov in search of the treasure, originally concealed in the chairs by Vorobianinov's mother-in-law. Simultaneously, the priest present at her deathbed confession also begins searching for the jewels, and becomes the duo's main rival in a screwball pursuit of riches.

At first glance, the novel can easily be read as subversive, satirizing Soviet institutions through a parodic portrayal of their flaws and contradictions. The main characters – a smooth con-man, a hapless former nobleman and a corrupt priest – are all unsavory, ‘anti-Soviet’ people in their own ways. Yet the reader is invited to commiserate with each of the heroes as they meet their grim fates, one by one. Insanity awaits the avaricious Father Fyodor; poverty and ignominy will face the once-illustrious Vorobianinov; and the trickster Ostap is brutally murdered at the end of the story. As Maya Vinokour points out: ‘[A] former nobleman with a seedy prerevolutionary history, Ippolit Matveevich Vorobianinov is a particularly inappropriate object of compassion’ (Ibid, p. 338). Most of the secondary protagonists we meet, like the ‘bashful thief’ Al'khen who cannot control his kleptomania, are also disrespectful of the Soviet state they simultaneously pervert and uphold. A minor figure in Il'f and Petrov's sequel ‘The Golden Calf’ – a sane man who feigns lunacy in order to escape that very system – demonstrates this irreverence: ‘In Soviet Russia, the only place where a normal person can live is an insane asylum’ (Il'f and Petrov Reference Il'f, Petrov, Anderson and Gurevich2009, p. 157). With sentiments such as this, Il'f and Petrov's creations not only failed to attract widespread accolades but actually endured significant critique – from a negative review in a 1928 issue of Evening Moscow to official censure in 1948 (Vinokour Reference Vinokour2015, p. 334).

Despite an initially lukewarm critical reception, the novels were widely read and frequently republished, ultimately achieving canonical status in the annals of Russian literature. A deeper analysis of ‘The Twelve Chairs’ reveals, contrary to first appearance, potential pro-regime readings of the work. In 1957, for instance, the authors were lauded for their tireless efforts to unmask the ‘enemies of socialism’ using ‘unifying’ laughter as a ‘weapon of war’ (Gurovich Reference Gurovich1957, p. 39). In the same way the unsavory elements of The Diamond Arm were tolerated because of its positive conclusion, Il'f and Petrov made sure that – despite its interesting and frequently sympathetic characters – their masterpiece wrapped up in a politically palatable way: something critics eventually agreed upon, most citizens didn't mind and dissidents could overlook. According to (Ibid, p. 336):

The authors’ contribution to Stalinist laughter instead of tears helped shape a distinct comedic style, not to mention a specifically Soviet discourse of distress (and a path towards healing).Footnote ⁷ One facet of this so-called ‘sad comedy’ can be seen in Il'f and Petrov's treatment of time, which (Ibid, p. 350) explicitly argues ‘enacts the folding of trauma into laughter’. The plot develops at breakneck speed, which ‘inhibits the reader's ability to dwell on any single traumatic moment or episode for long. Instead, the references are immersed in a kinetic narrative that will not stop until its antiheroes are destroyed, or at least harshly chastised’ (Vinokour Reference Vinokour2015). In contrast, official Soviet literature was built upon progressive structures in which ample time passed from the hero's ignorance to enlightenment. Time's movement was deliberate and constructive, with no surprises. Il'f and Petrov's rapid, dizzying vision of accelerated and unpredictable time was brought to life by director Leonid Gaidai, who relied on composer Aleksandr Zatsepin to create the meticulously constructed soundscape that illustrated and supported this story of growing chaos.

Filmmaker meets composer

Unlike many of the other film adaptations, Gaidai's 1971 The Twelve Chairs is relatively faithful to the original story. This feature in two parts pairs a beloved tale with a comedic director who was quickly coming to prominence and winning the adoration of the Soviet public. Gaidai many times admitted this was his favourite movie, and that to dramatise this story was ‘the dream of his entire life’ – which he got to fulfill after Georgian director Georgiy Danelia backed out during the development stage (Razzakov Reference Razzakov2013).

Born in the USSR's far eastern region of Amur Oblast in 1923, Leonid Gaidai remains one of the best-loved and most fondly remembered Soviet filmmakers. After sustaining a serious landmine injury during World War II, Gaidai got an education at the Moscow Institute of Cinematography (Ibid Reference Razzakov2013). A few years after graduation, he became famous when his short was included in a 1961 anthology called Absolutely Serious (Совершенно серьезно), in which he shared the bill with El'dar Riazanov and other up-and-coming screenwriters and directors. His contribution to this collection starred a celebrated comedic trio of crooks called Bonehead (Yuriy Nikulin), Coward (Georgiy Vitsyn) and Experienced (Evgeniy Morgunov), who eventually became legendary as antiheroes in Gaidai's other films. Throughout the 1960s, Gaidai collaborated primarily with comic actors from his own group, including his wife, Nina Grebeshkova. The early 1970s then saw him expand and enhance his physical comic style, and it is during these years that we see his film adaptation of Il'f and Petrov's novel take shape.

Getting the project off the ground was not easy; Gaidai auditioned 22 actors for the role of Ostap Bender, and settled on Georgian actor Archil Gomiashvili only after two others attempted the role unsuccessfully. Sergei Filippov, originally cast as Kisa, was fighting brain cancer at the beginning of filming and there was some confusion about who would ultimately play the part. He was adamant about continuing with the project, however, and his double tactfully bowed out, instead taking on the voice of the off-screen narrator. Planning, prepping and filming such a big venture was no easy task – hence, Gaidai stuck with familiar composer Aleksandr Zatsepin, a collaboration that had previously worked wonders in his other commercially successful films such as The Diamond Arm.

Aleksandr Zatsepin (b. 1926), active as a film composer from the late 1950s to the early 1990s, provided the soundtracks to over 30 Soviet films. Among these are all the Gaidai comedies mentioned above, including The Twelve Chairs. This enduring and productive partnership began when Gaidai's previous collaboration with composer Nikita Bogoslovskiy (Bootleggers [Самогонщики], 1961) ruptured owing to irreconcilable differences. This comedic short featured the previously cited trio of Coward, Bonehead and Experienced, who would go on to even greater fame in later Gaidai films. For his next film, Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures (1965), the director chose Aleksandr Zatsepin. After its box office success, the two men worked together on every one of Gaidai's comedies until his death in 1993.Footnote ⁸

Zatsepin was well ahead of his time when it came to technology, having fashioned his own cassette player while at conservatory in Alma-Ata in the mid-1950s, a time when such devices were only available professionally. He ultimately constructed the only non-governmental recording studio in the USSR, where such famous pop and jazz singers as Alla Pugacheva and Larisa Dolina would get their start. While working on his first collaboration with Gaidai, Zatsepin built a two-track stereo recorder for use in film (Vaitsenfeld Reference Vaitsenfeld2003). When asked why he – as an ‘official’ composer with access to state resources – still preferred to do everything himself at his own studio, his answer was as follows:

Other projects included building his own Mellotron and even a theremin owing to the lack of electronic instruments in the Soviet Union. In his 2003 interview with the Russian journal Audio Engineer, Zatsepin recalls a characteristically inventive trick used in Operation Y – recording a tiny bell, then slowing the tape down eightfold to produce the sound of a funeral knelling: ‘It would have been quite difficult to find a place to record an actual [life-size] bell – we would need to write a load of bureaucratic explanations as to why shooting a comedic film might require the ringing of a church bell’ (Ibid Reference Vaitsenfeld2003). In short, there were few supplies available for even ‘official’ composers and filmmakers. If such tools or trickery were available, a mountain of red tape guarded them.

Although prior to this collaboration Zatsepin was primarily a composer of pop songs, his contributions to cinema became famous in their own right. Combining popular instruments and dance forms with expressive, romantic leitmotifs, Zatsepin's music helped make movies of this era accessible to young demographics – all the while carrying optimistic, ideologically sound messages to its listeners. Music such as this served a dual function in Soviet comedic films of the 1970s. First, it set a sonic backdrop for the action, providing an appropriate ambiance for whatever narrative was to unfold. Secondly, original songs written for the film garnered double audiences both in movie theatres and on transistor radios. Zatsepin was a master in both spheres, as we will soon see in our examination of The Twelve Chairs soundtrack. In the same 2003 interview, the composer confided:

This detail illustrates just how involved Aleksandr Zatsepin was in the soundscape of Gaidai's films from the very first. Leonid Gaidai was known as master of the unexpected physical gesture or carnivalesque quip, and Zatsepin was clearly up for the challenge of matching the director's eccentricities sound for frame.

Zatsepin's soundscapes

The opening titles of The Twelve Chairs (1971) – their fourth film together over six years – were just as intricately planned and set the tone for what was to come. The first thing we hear as the famous Mosfilm Studios opening credits begin rolling is a pathetic-sounding trumpet, clearly with a mute, announcing the main theme of the film.Footnote ¹⁰ The comic ‘wah-wah’ effect forms a stark contrast to the epic seriousness of the Socialist Realist sculpture Worker and Kolkhoz Woman (Рабочий и колхозница) used as the Mosfilm logo. The music then launches into the slapdash, upbeat opening theme, which I will refer to as the ‘chase theme’.

Before we hear even a few measures, however, it is abruptly interrupted, and we perceive some off-screen chatter and instruments tuning. This gives the very opening of the film a DIY feeling, well-suited for the homespun anti-heroism of Ostap Bender's tale. These ‘found sounds’ continue for several seconds, reminiscent of the Beatles’ ‘Revolution 9’, with certain sentences such as ‘Я узнаю эту музыку!’ (‘I recognize this music!’) rising above the fray and then looping. Finally, after a successful launch into the chase theme – complete with syllabic singing à la Eduard KhilFootnote ¹¹ – the credits finish with a disembodied hand slicing open a chair and exposing its treasureless innards, springs and all. This image is accompanied by a clearly electronic ‘boing’ sound – most likely Zatsepin's own creation – which continues to resonate during the opening shot of Part One, titled ‘Things Are Moving’ (Лед тронулся: literally ‘the ice has broken’).

The chase theme returns multiple times throughout the film, usually during comic montages, for example when Ostap accidentally dyes Kisa's scant hair and moustache in rainbow hues, or when Kisa and Father Fyodor have a fast-motion slapstick punch-up over the first of the chairs.Footnote ¹² This theme mirrors the authors’ aforementioned playing with time, encouraging the viewer to laugh instead rather than through whatever sadness or trauma is reflected on the screen – be it the decrepit body of the aging aristocrat, or the gang of homeless children who serve as Ostap's assistants. The theme takes the place of ‘Il'f and Petrov's benevolent, if autocratic, narrator’ who ‘speeds readers past a series of grotesques meant to evoke, but not unpack, traumatic events’ (Vinokour Reference Vinokour2015, p. 352).

The theme itself beings with a late 1960s proto-disco string sound, and continues in an orchestral cinematic pop style, highlighting the kinetic comic narrative of the story. This is the sonic essence of Il'f and Petrov's universe, where trauma ‘should remain buried beneath a sunny exterior, and the path of history, though it may pass through swamps, leads ultimately towards the light’ (Ibid). Other appearances of the theme occur as Ostap is collecting money at a widow's home for the fictional ‘Alliance of the Sword and Plowshare’; the painting montage on the cruise ship where our heroes have pretended to be artists in order to follow the remaining chairs; and an actual chase scene after Ostap gets kicked out of the Vasiuki Chess Club. All these uses make light of some grotesque or pathetic situation, employing music as a means of transporting viewers past such scenes and making them appear comical despite the real tragedies inherent therein.

Another use of popular music appears within the frame. The most prominent diegetic examples emerge throughout Ostap's relationship with the wealthy and single Madame Gritsatsuyeva – he plays and sings a tango as he courts her.Footnote ¹³ The song's narrative tells of a love-stricken pirate who commits a murder-suicide in a jealous rage and is meant to pluck at Gritsatsuyeva's heartstrings. Some of Zatsepin's film songs became nationwide hits – such as his ‘Bear Song’ [Песенка о медеведях, 1967] from Kidnapping Caucasian Style – but the sheet music for Ostap's tango was never published. Zatsepin's guess as to the reason was that ‘the song probably had some kind of capitalistic flavor’ (Reference Zatsepin2003, p. 13). It is likely that censors associated tango with bourgeois café culture and did not allow the written music to circulate.

In another diegetic use of popular music, Zatsepin has the bride, groom and guests all dancing at Ostap and Gritsatsuyeva's wedding.Footnote ¹⁴ He remembers being told that using such music was ‘worshipful of the West!’ (Ibid, p. 12). In the same memoir, the composer relates that he could not call his group a ‘jazz-orchestra’, even though it played jazz. The group had to be designated as an estrada orchestra.Footnote ¹⁵ In the USSR's hierarchy of genres, jazz was looked down upon as a capitalistic indulgence and was ranked even lower than homegrown ‘light’ entertainment. The irony, of course, is that such music was still of Western provenance – but calling it by a different name made it palatable to officials.

This frantic film embodies the kinetic narrative described by Vinokour, bringing the social critique and irony of the novel to life. I'lf and Petrov satirized social institutions including marriage, theatrical culture, upper economic classes and ultimately the entire system that tried to curb human greed and selfishness, instead exacerbating it to unthinkable heights of murderous evil. In the 1970s (as for most of the Soviet Union's existence), however, whether a subject or character was perceived as taboo and therefore unsuitable for literary treatment greatly depended on contextual factors. Those same factors could be mercurial at best and entirely unpredictable at worst. As Gregory Carleton writes: ‘The value of a given referent (the philistine, criminal activity, daily mishaps, etc.)’ remained ‘substantively neutral before its perception in a literary structure’ (Reference Carleton1998, p. 34). In other words, characters and sounds meant little until they were used.

Including Western-style music or morally suspect heroes in a state-sponsored film was always a balancing act. Zatsepin spends much time in his 2003 autobiography talking about how frustrating and discouraging censorship was to his and Gaidai's creative processes.Footnote ¹⁶ In other words, even the ‘official’ composers and filmmakers did not have an easy time negotiating the networks of restraint both created and upheld by the state; the meaning of light, entertaining culture was argued over endlessly. Ultimately, however, estrada's role in adapting Il'f and Petrov's humour for movie audiences aligned with Soviet political orthodoxy just enough. In Vinokour's parlance, it managed to ‘sublimate mourning into more ‘productive’ pursuits’ while simultaneously delighting the viewer (Vinokour Reference Vinokour2015, p. 353).

The Irony of Fate

Born in the southeastern Russian city of Samara (known then as Kuibyshev) in 1927, El'dar Riazanov is often considered the ‘patriarch of Russian cinematography’ (Shymanovskiy Reference Shymanovskiy2014). After suffering a somewhat fragmented childhood family life, Riazanov was educated at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography (now the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, or VGIK), where he came under the influence of figures such as Sergei Eisenstein. His first feature film, Carnival Night (Карнавальная ночь, 1955), was a celebration of the ‘complexities of contemporary life’ (MacFadyen Reference MacFadyen2003, p. 55). It is often called the first comedy of the Thaw.Footnote ¹⁷ From the outset, popular music was a large part of the director's modus operandi, helping create ‘the necessary (safe) bridge between comedy and the Party elite, between government and disrespectful giggles’ (Ibid). This story of students producing a New Year's Ball, replete with songs and skits of various genres, openly referenced the Western musical or variety show and – like The Twelve Chairs – gained great approval from audiences and critics alike despite its potential air of subversion. Soon thereafter, Riazanov made what remains in some ways the most popular Soviet movie of all time, the responses to which ‘helped to institutionalize the film like no other Soviet comedy in the twentieth century’ (Ibid, p. 218).

This Soviet feature took place in a world where Khrushchev's decree, ‘On Architectural Excess’, had already brought into being industrialised construction in place of grand Stalinist architecture. The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath! – ‘the most famous film romance of the Soviet Union’ (Ibid, p. 5) – stars a Woody Allen-like anti-hero in a love story unlikely to occur outside of the standardised building projects of those post-Stalin years. Although The Irony of Fate is a love story, it is also ‘a story of ugly architecture, of the Thaw's box-like concrete apartments, not Stalin's palatial edifices’ (Ibid, p. 226). In this haphazard tale, a drunken night at a Moscow bathhouse sends a timid doctor to the wrong city for New Year's Eve, causing the breakup of two romances and engendering an unlikely new one.

The main premise of the movie is that Moscow and Leningrad – like so many other Soviet metropolises – contained not only similarly named streets and addresses, but also identically planned and constructed buildings and entire blocks. Everywhere looked the same. After overindulging in vodka while celebrating his recent engagement, Zhenya Lukashin's friends confuse him with another compatriot and escort the slumbering doctor onto a plane to Leningrad instead of sending him back home to ring in the New Year with his fiancée. He awakens in Leningrad airport, thinking he is still in Moscow. He takes a taxi to Third Builders’ Ave, House 25, Apartment 12. All Soviet cities, goes the joke, contain a street with that name – and so the driver sets off. In fact, not only is the building completely identical, Lukashin's Moscow key also opens this Leningrad apartment. A confrontation ensues between Zhenya and the legitimate owner of the flat, Nadia, who is awaiting the arrival of her fiancé. Ultimately, this uncomfortable yet humorous situation serves to illuminate the problems of Nadia and Zhenya's respective relationships and – through a rollercoaster of emotion – drives the main characters into each other's arms.

Early reviews did not portend the immense popularity eventually gained by The Irony of Fate: ‘Some criticized the speed and whimsy of its central romance as problematic, even verging on immorality; before being filmed, the screenplay was performed in 110 Soviet dramatic theatres, but did not then play in Moscow for these same reasons’ (Ibid, p. 219). Critics also didn't know what to make of the movie's genre: ‘The film muddled its emphases and intentions, being both a “document of social psychology” and “a comedy with a slightly sad smile, a kind, gentle sense of humor”’ (Ibid). In addition, the picture – although not a musical – incorporated many diegetic songs, flip-flopping between farcical silliness and real trauma.

Initially a chamber play, the film extends a theatrical atmosphere of small spaces and intimate conversations to the screen, with multiple camera angles to capture the subtleties therein. This tragicomedy bears an interesting relationship to the above discussion of Il'f and Petrov's handling of trauma through time. The Irony of Fate provides a different kind of speed and whimsy, essentially slower and quieter, with a strong musical component. As a retrospective article mused: ‘It all came together because on top of these various layers there was TRUTH, an uncompromising, unspoken truth that knew no language in which it might be uttered. The truth that in a cheerless Soviet world you could still find cheer; you could be warm within the cold walls of new housing projects; in the midst of our awful Russian booze-ups, during our miserable New Year's celebrations, things could still be good’ (Minaev Reference Minaev1996, pp. 66–7, translation by D. MacFayden).

Despite the film's lasting popularity, the director's point of view was somewhat different; Riazanov (Reference Riazanov1995, p. 218) reported being ‘crushed, defeated, and flabbergasted by the gigantic, mighty flood of viewers’ responses to the film’. Yet audience appreciation kept coming. There are a number of possible reasons as to why The Irony of Fate in particular gained such incredible popularity: ‘The film punctuates each [New Year] holiday in a way that Riazanov's other films punctuate the biographies and memories of millions of viewers,’ each of whom watches a Riazanov comedy, ‘sighs nostalgically, and then recalls his private experiences’ (MacFayden Reference MacFadyen2003, p. 218). As David MacFadyen (Ibid, p. 222) points out: ‘The contact is not that of film/state, or director/doctrine, but film/viewer and (better still) character/viewer’.

One of the ways that character/viewer contact is made here is through music – specifically through songs for guitar and voice, which use carefully chosen and curated poems. In El'dar Riazanov's The Irony of Fate or ‘Enjoy Your Bath’ (Ironiia sud'by ili S legkim parom!, Reference Riazanov and Riazanov1975), many song lyrics heard in the film are based on poems by Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva, Bella Akhmadulina and Evgenii Evtushenko. Even though most of the lyrics in The Irony of Fate are dedicated to the themes of love, loneliness and friendship, an educated spectator would immediately recognize the ambivalent political and cultural status of the poets whose words are incorporated into the soundtrack (Klimova Reference Klimova2013, p. 41)

These choices were made by the director in tandem with composer Mikael Tariverdiev (1931–96), whose settings and interpretations of these texts lent a powerful feeling of private ‘outsiderness’ to the film and connected with audiences in a special way.

Mikael Tariverdiev was born in the Republic of Georgia in 1931. After completing music school in Tbilisi, he came to Moscow and entered the prestigious Gnessin Institute, where he studied under Armenian composer Avram Khachaturian.Footnote ¹⁸ In 1958, Tariverdiev became a member of the Composers’ Union, and two years later, the Cinematographers’ Union. Like many Soviet composers writing popular music, he would also author operas, ballets, vocal cycles and music for films as well as television (Petrushanskaia Reference Petrushanskaia1989, p. 113). Despite being best known for songs he wrote for the large and small screens, he never considered himself a film composer. Khachaturian could see that the young Tariverdiev was particularly gifted in the realm of chamber music, and encouraged his student to work within that genre. Ultimately, Tariverdiev's vocal cycles were seen as the peak of his craft by experts, and he was recognized for particularly effective ways of setting poetry to music (Ibid Reference Petrushanskaia1989).

In a sense, Tariverdiev's contribution to The Irony of Fate was exactly the kind of ‘chamber-vocal cycle’ Tsuker (Reference Tsuker1983) refers to in his writings about the composer. Although the only instrument used diegetically is a guitar, these songs reflect an ‘unusual relationship between vocals and accompaniment; recitative, even singspiel; prelude-like accompaniment; and ‘Bachisms’ that were hallmarks of the composer's sound’ (Petrushanskaia Reference Petrushanskaia1989, p. 188). Indeed, it was difficult to classify not only the genre of the film itself, but also the music within it. Composer Andrei Petrov (1930–2006) summed it up thus: ‘The most important thing in Tariverdiev's music is his romanticism, or rather, his poeticism – a quality sadly lacking from most twentieth-century music. Poetry with a capital “P” permeates his entire craft’ (Tsuker Reference Tsuker1985). This was a characteristic Tariverdiev shared with the genre of avtorskaia pesnia, or bard song – and indeed, many of the songs written for this film contain resonances of that musical style.Footnote ¹⁹ According to Rimma Petrushanskaia's analysis, these songs ‘changed the character of Riazanov's and Braginskiy's screenplay’, turning it from ‘buffoonery into a highly poetic, and even fairy-tale romance’ (Petrushanskaia, Reference Petrushanskaia1989, p. 120).

‘People sing when they're happy…’

It is these bard-like songs that will be my focus, as they not only play a significant role in narrative and character development, but also speak to audience members in a way other types of music could not. In fact, I argue that these ambivalent, highly personal texts reach out to the viewer, encouraging and nurturing the creation of a subjectivity outside of Soviet politics reminiscent of Yurchak's vnye. Tariverdiev helped Riazanov select the texts, which we know were ambiguous – and here's how he spoke of his own treatment of the poetry:

The songs in The Irony of Fate do just that, creating and enabling character development, reflecting genuine laughter and pain, and serving as the ultimate bonding mechanism between the main characters as well as between each character and viewer.

The first song comes right after the opening animation, which takes the first three minutes of the film to gently poke fun at the homogenization of construction Union-wide (Riazanov Reference Riazanov and Riazanov1975). As credits fade in over a backdrop of snowy Moscow buildings, we hear the voice of famous composer, singer, and guitarist Sergei Nikitin singing Evgeniy Evtushenko's ‘Со мною вот что происходит’ (‘Here is the Story of My Grievance,’ 1957). Although this would have been a familiar voice to most viewers, the audience doesn't yet know that Nikitin also provides the singing voice of Zhenya, the male lead. Later in the movie, we will hear this voice again in what appears to be a non-diegetic context, at the end of the scene discovering that it was Zhenya singing all along. Here, however, we do not yet know the vocal soundscape of the film and assume non-diegesis. The solo guitar accompaniment and intimate, close recording style, however, make it clear this is not just a part of the soundtrack. This song walks the line between existing simultaneously within the space of the film and outside of it. Without being connected to a character yet, the voice acts as a musical acousmêtre – a vocal character deriving power from being heard but not seen.Footnote ²⁰ The poem itself sets a melancholy tone, foreshadowing the impending separation of long-time lovers:

From that point on, there is a satisfying symmetry in the way songs appear throughout the film, as male and female leads trade off singing. Firstly, both Zhenya and Nadia sing to their original lovers as a form of character development. Zhenya is goaded into it by his fiancée, who insists that ‘people sing when they're happy’ (‘люди поют – когда они счастливы’). He therefore dutifully picks up his guitar and sings Tariverdiev's setting of Boris Pasternak's ‘Никого не будет в доме’ (‘Nobody Will Be Home,’ 1958). With this text, he proves himself a sensitive, romantic personality, albeit with a few uncertainties about his present situation:

Nadia's serenade is similarly requested by her lover, who enjoys hearing her sing. Her text, much like Zhenya's, is also ambivalent in tone – Tariverdiev and Riazanov chose Bella Akhmadulina's poem ‘По улице моей который год’ (‘Along My Street for Many Years,’ 1959):

These performances are the first time we see each of the leads express a deeper, layered subjectivity; within each song we get the sense that, despite their respective relationships (or perhaps because of them), neither is completely happy. The mood lightens swiftly when Nadia sings next, spurred on by her girlfriends who – upon meeting the intruder Zhenya – mistakenly believe him to be her fiancé Ippolit. As they thrust a guitar upon her, she sings another lyrical number: ‘На Тихорецкую’ (‘To Tikhoretskaia Station,’ 1962). Originally written by Tariverdiev over a decade earlier for Mikhail L'vovskiy's play Childhood Friend (Друг детства, 1962), the song gained great popularity after The Irony of Fate's release. Many other compositions from the film took on lives of their own, and even today are known verbatim by tens of millions.

This song is upbeat and lighthearted, despite the ‘white handkerchiefs and sad eyes’ of those parting as ‘the wagon rolls on, a platform is left behind’ (translation mine). Riazanov recalls inviting Tariverdiev to work with him on the rest of the film's music because of how much he loved this particular number and wanted to include it (Riazanov Reference Riazanov1995, p. 74). Its unique genesis among the film's other on-screen songs is paired with a shift in mood as, for the first time, Nadia begins to flirt with Zhenya. His protestations of mistaken identity die down as he listens, and it becomes clear he has finally – even if only temporarily – put aside the stress of the unusual confrontation, and is beginning to see the woman in front of him a little more clearly (Table 1).

Table 1 Diegetic songs performed by characters in The Irony of Fate

After she finishes and her friends leave the ‘newly engaged couple’, tension between the two subsides as Zhenya snacks on some leftover New Year's food, asking Nadia questions about her career as a schoolteacher. The mood improves, and he puts on a record; they start to dance while reminiscing about their distressing encounter only a couple of hours ago. The first bonds of affection are seen developing between them – then the doorbell rings (ostensibly, it is Ippolit come to reclaim his fiancée), and the first half of the feature ends on this ambiguous note.

When the film resumes, Nadia kicks both men out of her apartment after a brief skirmish. After spending some time in the freezing cold of Leningrad's windy streets, Zhenya eventually returns for his briefcase, and the burgeoning romance resumes. He decides to show off his talents, playing ‘Если у вас нету тети’ (‘If You Do Not Have an Auntie’). Tariverdiev's setting of poet Aleksandr Aronov's ‘Песенка о собаке’ (‘Song About a Dog’) soon continues this trend of more upbeat, lighthearted – yet still poignant – reflections:

They are each impressed with one another in turn, and a mutual admiration unfolds henceforth.

Ultimately, Riazanov's choice to make such a deeply personal and apolitical film was rebellious in itself. There are no overt ideological resonances – only subtle poking fun at Soviet standardisation, but that is ultimately what brings the two characters together in a happy ending. Love comes from bad urban planning. And in large part, it is Tariverdiev's music and selection of poetry that makes this an act of lyricism within a loudly civic setting.

Each of these poets had problematic relationships with the state and were, at one time or another, banned in the Soviet Union. The subversive, ambivalent longing expressed in their poetry connects the audience – many of whom would have known the significance of these particular lyrical choices – to the film and characters in a deeply personal way. This was yet another facet of Riazanov's celebration of complexity and ambiguity. As David MacFadyen (Reference MacFadyen2003, p. 221) writes: ‘It is the songs that more than anything convey a rarely seen, yet ideal mixture of sadness, doubt, and elusive happiness. By doing so, sung poetry added a “significant semantic load” over and above a mere punctuation of the plot with moments of relief or wistfulness.’ In this case, popular songs are chosen for their function as a carrier of unorthodox texts, and an Aesopian language in themselves.

Despite creating the space for an apolitical, highly intimate experience of viewer subjectivity, the personal ambiguities explored in The Irony of Fate could not help but interact with larger themes and organs within Soviet society:

It seems the latter statement contains at least some truth, for both apolitical popular music and the cinematic efforts of directors like Gaidai and Riazanov were ultimately supported by the state – almost as if decision-makers at the very top understood that Soviet citizens needed a vnye in which to exist outside of their publicly socialist lives.