The Old Jockey
Director: Boris Barnet
1940 / 96min / Digital
Working free spiritedly from a screenplay cowritten by the accomplished comic playwright Nikolai Erdman, once hailed by Maxim Gorky as “our new Gogol,” Barnet spins a lovely shaggy-dog yarn about an aging horse jockey (Ivan Skuratov) who begrudgingly accepts his retirement as stable master in his provincial hometown. Filigreed with ingenious comedic digressions and effortless pictorial flourishes, including a climactic race as thrilling as any committed to film, The Old Jockey presents an impression of common Russian life on the cusp of World War II so richly and irreverently specific that it would be banned as “a slander against Soviet people and a mockery of Soviet village life.”
Introduction by programmer Edo Choi on Saturday, March 28th
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