Volga-Volga

Volga-Volga.

Volga-Volga (Russian: Волга-Волга) is a Soviet film comedy directed by Grigori Aleksandrov, released on April 24, 1938. It centres on a group of amateur performers on their way to Moscow to perform in a talent contest called the Moscow Musical Olympiad. Most of the action takes place on a steamboat travelling on the Volga River. The lead roles were played by Alexandrov's wife, Lyubov Orlova, and Igor Ilyinsky.

According to Orlova, the name of the film is taken from a popular Russian folk song, Stenka Razin, that Alexandrov sang while rowing with Charlie Chaplin in San Francisco Bay. Chaplin jokingly suggested the words as a title for a movie, but Alexandrov took it seriously and named his new film Volga-Volga.^[1]

The feature was said to be Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin's favourite film.^[2] Nikita Khrushchev in his memoirs says that in the pre-war period Stalin laughed at him since he resembled a character from the film.

In 2006, a colorization of the original black-and-white film began. The colorized version premiered on the Russian First Channel on February 14, 2010.

Gallery

• 
  Igor Ilyinsky and Mariya Mironova
• 
  Igor Ilyinsky
• 
  Lyubov Orlova
• 
  Lyubov Orlova
• 
  Andrey Tutysgkin

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Volga-Volga.

• Volga-Volga at the Internet Movie Database
• Volga-Volga at AllMovie
• Stalin's favourite film restored in colour, AFP, 12/02/2010.