My Friend Ivan Lapshin


My Friend Ivan Lapshin is a 1985 Soviet crime drama directed by Aleksei German and produced by Lenfilm, based on a novel by Yuri German adapted by Eduard Volodarsky. Music was composed by Arkadi Gagulashvili, sound by Nikolai Astakhov, cinematography by Valeri Fedosov, film editing by Leda Semyonova. It was narrated by Valeri Kuzin.

Plot

Set in 1935 in the fictional provincial town of Unchansk, the film is presented as the recollections of a man who at the time was a nine-year-old boy living with his father in a communal flat shared with criminal police investigator Ivan Lapshin and a number of other characters. There are several plot strands: a provincial troupe of actors arrive and put on a play without much success; a friend of Lapshin's, the journalist Khanin, shows up, depressed after his wife's death; and Lapshin investigates the Solovyov gang of criminals. Lapshin falls in love with the actress Natasha Adashova, but she is in love with Khanin. It is "a film about people 'building socialism' on a bleak frozen plain, their town's one street a long straggle of low wooden buildings beneath a huge white sky, leading from the elegant stucco square by the river's quayside out into wilderness".

Reception

According to Tony Wood,

Cast