Film

What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases


Katok i Skrypka (1961)

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Tarkovsky's graduation project at the VGIK film school in Moscow offers a key to all the later 'mature' work: it's his clearest statement of frustrated longing for a perfect union with an idealised father-figure. Six-year-old Sasha (Fomchenko) lives with his domineering, unsympathetic mother (Adzhuberi), and studies the violin under an even more domineering and even less sympathetic female music teacher. His idealised father-figure is Sergei (Zamansky), a butch-but-sensitive road-mender, who saves him from being bullied, gives him bread, milk and lessons in self-confidence and respect, and promises to take him to the movies - to see Chapayev, the venerable romantic portrait of a Communist hero. The 'romance' between man and boy receives the benediction of a prototypical Tarkovskian rainstorm, incidentally yielding a charming cine-poem about drops of water and puddles. Some ten years later, Tarkovsky reworked all of this much more elaborately in Solaris.

Author: TR

Time Out Film Guide


What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields




Most popular on this site


Top Stories

Has David Cronenberg turned tame?

Has David Cronenberg turned tame?

Has director David Cronenberg veered too far from his radical and bloody roots with new film 'A Dangerous Method'?

The 10 worst date movies

The 10 worst date movies

Just in time for Valentine's Day, we present ten of the least romantic films ever made

Where to watch this year's Oscar-nominated films

Where to watch this year's Oscar-nominated films

Find out where to watch 2012's Oscar-nominated films in London cinemas

10 unlikely badboy biopics

10 unlikely badboy biopics

Featuring Phil Collins, Jeremy Clarkson, Nick Clegg, David Starkey and a host of other unlikely subjects

Interview: Sean Durkin on 'Martha Marcy May Marlene'

Interview: Sean Durkin on 'Martha Marcy May Marlene'

The first-time director of the brilliant new thriller discusses religious cults and robot boxing

Pop-up cinema for Valentine's Day

Pop-up cinema for Valentine's Day

Side-step romantic clichés with some alternative Valentine’s viewing