ABSTRACT
The end of the second world war and the restoration of peace in the country not only inspired film makers in their quest for new themes and subjects, but also raised some hopes for the revival of a genre which had been a tremendous success in pre-war years: the musical comedy film, buoyant, full of life-giving optimism and good-natured humor. However, no efforts to resurrect it, in its old form, proved successful. The very first of them, the comedy by Alexandrov (director) and Duriayevsky (composer), Spring (1947), showed no potential for the development of this genre. Moreover, the failure of Spring was to a great extent the result of its authors' intention to revert to the scheme they had once tested in the film Volga-Volga. The copy appeared to be poorer than the original, and less successful artistically. As for its genre characteristics, it was a film-revue in which heterogeneous song episodes were 'tied up' with variable success in a simple narrative by means of short intermediate episodes. Unfortunately, Dunayevsky, who had kept in the background during the four years of the war, could not, even in his habitual genre of musical comedy film win back his lost reputation as the leading song composer of the country. True, his leitmotiv song 'Brooks are babbling' ('A Song of Spring') written for the film Spring, does not lack fascination, yet persistent reiteration makes it somewhat monotonous, in spite of the heroic efforts of the director, who had used all his inventiveness and imagination in the scene where a chorus of the 'men of science' are learning the song, under the direction of a young actress. At the same time, in Spring Dunayevsky made a great advance towards 'enlivening' the musical language of Soviet comedy film by using jazz intonations and rhythmic formulas from the Soviet variety stage: this gave an additional stimulus to the revival of the genre, and opened up new vistas in its development. However, Spring was the last picture made in cooperation by Grigori Alexandrov and Isaak Dunayevsky; they never collaborated again.
