Istoriya Asi Klyachinoy, kotoraya lyubila, da ne vyshla zamuzh

Asya’s Happiness

Directed by: Andrej Mikhalkov-Konchalovskij, USSR - Sovjet Union, 1968

USSR - Sovjet Union, 1968


Cast and Credits

Director Andrej Mikhalkov-Konchalovskij

Technical specifications
Technical Details: Format: 35 mm - Color,Length: 99 minutes
Sound System: not indicated

Reviews in German: «Shot in 1966 and subsequently banned for some twenty years, this is far superior to Konchalovsky's later work in America. Basically about a group of villagers working a collective farm, and partly focused on the options open to the lame, pregnant but proud Asya, it is an oblique, touching portrait of a remote community that is both poor and apparently forgotten by the Soviet authorities. Most of the time, the outside world barely intrudes (there is talk of Vietnam, distant tanks rumble); the farm-folk spend their non-working hours gossiping, drinking, reminiscing and, in the case of a selfish layabout and a visiting gypsy, jealously quarrelling over Asya. But plot is of less importance than atmosphere - it was probably the unglamourous vision of village life that incurred official wrath - and the fluid, even virtuoso direction. The black-and-white camerawork is very lyrical, the acting (by a cast largely made up of local non-professionals) lends the film a quiet emotional integrity, and the shifts in tone - from long contemplative shots of landscape and faces to rapidly cut, vérité-style sequences of joyous communal dancing and singing - are effortlessly smooth. Rarely has such a vivid, plausible sense of daily life been conveyed by a Soviet director.» GA, Time Out, London

Asya's Happiness
Capsule by Jonathan Rosenbaum, From the Chicago Reader

Originally entitled The Story of Asya Klachina, Who Loved a Man but Did Not Marry Him Because She Was Proud, Andrei Konchalovsky's remarkable 1967 depiction of life on a collective farm, one of his best films, was shelved by Soviet authorities for 20 years, apparently because its crippled heroine is pregnant but unengaged and because the overall depiction of Soviet rural life is decidedly less than glamorous. (The farm chairman, for instance, played by an actual farm chairman, is a hunchback.) Working with beautiful black-and-white photography and a cast consisting mainly of local nonprofessionals (apart from the wonderful Iya Savina as Asya and a couple others), Konchalovsky offers one of the richest and most realistic portrayals of the Russian peasantry ever filmed, working in an unpretentious style that occasionally suggests a Soviet rural counterpart to the early John Cassavetes. Many of the men in the cast relate anecdotes about war and postwar experiences that are gripping and authentic, the interworkings of the community are lovingly detailed, and the handling of the heroine and her boyfriends is refreshingly candid without ever being didactic or sensationalist. Episodic in structure and leisurely paced, the film is never less than compelling. 99 min.

General Information

Istoriya Asi Klyachinoy, kotoraya lyubila, da ne vyshla zamuzh is a motion picture produced in the year 1968 as a USSR - Sovjet Union production. The Film was directed by Andrej Mikhalkov-Konchalovskij, with in the leading parts. We have currently no synopsis of this picture on file;

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