Cheap Jolly Fellows (Video) (Grigori Aleksandrov) Price

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Customer Reviews of Jolly Fellows

Who wouldn't enjoy a good 1930s Soviet musical comedy?
"Jolly Fellows" (or "The World is Laughing" as the title on the movie declares) is the first musical comedy directed by Grigori Alexndrov. The plot is basically a rags-to-riches tale of Kostya Potekhin (Leonid Utyosov), a shepherd who ends up the conductor of a jazz orchestra. This is because flirty Yelena (Mariya Strelkova) mistakes the shepherd for a famous conductor. Invited to a swank party, the shepherd plays his pan flute for the enraptured audience, only to discover that all of the animals from his farm have followed the sound of his music to the dining room and destroyed the carefully prepared feast.
The musical comedy in this film actually involve comic music: in one sequence the shepherd ends up at the concert hall and is again mistaken for the conductor; while trying to attract Yelena's attention he leads the orchestra in Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. Later his jazz orchestra ends up with their instruments full of water and end up having to make music with their mouths (think of Spike Lee crossed with Bobby McFerrin).

The romantic subplot, which never seems to occupy as much of the storyline as your would think, involves Anuta (Lyubov Orlova), a servant to Yelena who falls for Kostya, but has trouble getting him to notice. I understand Orlova became the first recognized star of Soviet cinema, which is certainly no surprise. She has a wonderful singing voice, much better than what we hear in Jeanette McDonald films (although perhaps this is because of technological problems with old films transferred to videotape). However, Utyosov is clearly no Nelson Eddy, and Orlova has to reign it in big time during their duets. But whenever Orlova begins singing, she lights up the screen.

The film begins with caricatures of Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton; at which point we are informed they are NOT in this film. Once you get past the oxymoronic notion of a Soviet Musical Comedy (from the heyday of Stalin no less), this is a film with some enjoyable moments and not just a historical oddity. Alexandrov has several interesting tracking shots throughout the film, especially the one of the bathers along the sea shore. This was the first Soviet film in which entire sequences were shot to pre-recorded musical accompaniment and there are several nice comic bits involving sound and music. First released as "The Shepherd of Abrau," this film is apparently also known as "Jazz Comedy" and "Moscow Laughs." This film is the first in a series of films directed by Alexandrov and starring Orlova, which includes "Circus" and "Volga Volga," produced by the joint effort of Polart Distribution and Facets Multi-Media.