Moscow Distrusts Tears

Moscow Distrusts Tears, maybe, but not Hollywood: incredibly, Menshov's jejune melodrama was awarded an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. By The Three Sisters out of How to Marry a Millionaire (or rather, in the Workers' State, a hockey champion or TV cameraman), its rambling plot involves a trio of provincial factory girls descending on the capital and setting their caps at every eligible member of the local intelligentsia. Twenty years later, predictability has set in with a vengeance: divorce, loneliness, intimations of mortality, as well as the providential apparition of a nice, virile hyper-sensitive mate for the most obviously sympathetic of the three. Well acted, occasionally amusing, but at over two hours, quite interminable. Heart warming assurance that escapism is the same the world over.