Jolly Fellows

Jolly Fellows Russian Vesyolye rebyata, also translated as HappyGoLucky Guys, Moscow Laughs and Jazz Comedy, is a 1934 Soviet musical film, directed by Grigori Aleksandrov and starring his wife Lyubov Orlova, a gifted singer and the first recognized star of Soviet cinema.

Yelena Mariya Strelkova, a welloff wouldbe singer who cant carry a tune, mistakes shepherd Kostya Potekhin Leonid Utyosov for a famous Italian conductor of a jazz orchestra and invites him to an elegant party held in her house. He plays his pan flute, which attracts the herd of animals from his kolkhoz to the dining tables. Yelenas servant Anyuta Lyubov Orlova falls for Kostya. But Kostya is attracted to Yelena, and when she turns him down following the discovery of his real identity, he is very upset. He leaves for the city to try himself as a professional musician and finds himself in many comical situations. Eventually he joins a jazz band consisting of young jolly fellows. Kostya becomes a head of the band and it turns to be quite a challenge not only is he supposed to manage the creative work and performances but he must also control his quicktempered bandmates, whose fiery arguments sometimes turn rehearsals into a brawl that results in the band being turned out of the house by their landlord. Because of this the band is urged to rehearse before a forthcoming performance right in the street and even play at funerals for more practice. On a rainy evening Kostya and his band mates accidentally meet Anyuta on their way to a concert hall and take her with them. She is revealed to be an excellent singer, so she joins the band and they start to perform together successfully.Graham Greene, in hisSeptember 1935 review for The Spectator, wrote that it is the best thing that has happened to the cinema since Ren Clair made The Italian Straw Hat. Alexandrov, who has been awarded a Soviet Order for his direction, has produced, just as Clair did then, out of the smallest resources and apparently with poorquality film, a picture of almost ecstatic happiness. ... I have no wish to criticise this film, but simply to rejoice in its wildness, its grotesqueness, its light, taking tunes, a sense of good living that owes nothing to champagne or womens clothes. ........

Source: Wikipedia