Melodia!: Screening “A Man from Boulevard des Capucines” by Alla Surikova

Kino Klassika is delighted to take part in the British Film Institute’s Musicals! season, and present film by Alla Surikova. A Man from the Boulevard des Capucines is a Red Western comedy film of 1987 (Mosfilm production), with nods to silent film and the transforming power of celluloid.

Directed by Alla Surikova, one of a handful of female filmmakers who were working in cinema at the time, Man from Capucines, can be called a red Western, in which a Soviet filmmaker borrows the myth of the Western and the story of a small-time cinematographer bringing the film to a violent town. Playing with all the devices of American cinema and affectionately satirising the Western film itself, just as Buffalo Bill mythologized his exploits, and later Hollywood magnified those, this fascinating and self-reflexive film acts as a hall of mirrors, from a film within a film to a film that perhaps critiques the death of the Soviet state itself.

In Russian with English subtitles.