Following on Mikhail (Michael) Kalik's new film, And the Wind Returneth, presented at the San Francisco International Film Festival, we present his much-loved classic, Goodbye, Boys. "The mid-'60s must now be reckoned one of the richest periods in Soviet cinema's whole checkered history, as revelations of its forgotten riches continue. Mikhail Kalik is the latest name to emerge from undeserved obscurity-his emigration to Israel in 1971 wiped a decade of lyrical innovation from official histories-and Goodbye, Boys joins that select band of films that explore with conviction the uncertainties of adolescence. The boys who leave for conscription in the film's final reel identify, in one of the film's most evocative touches, with the three comrades of Kozintsev and Trauberg's Youth of Maxim, seen at a seaside cinema. But this sixties view of the late thirties allows Kalik to explore their inner feelings in the last summer before war. Aided by Patashvili's sinewy, mobile camerawork and superb playing from a young cast, the result has a lively eloquence that goes far beyond words or history. Seen today, its ironies are multiple and deeply moving."-Ian Christie, London '91