One of the biggest surprises among the previously banned films unshelved in the USSR in the past few years is this sharply critical and exceedingly funny film. Part of the surprise is to find a fifties film which harkens back to the eccentric pre-Socialist Realist style developed by the FEKS team in the twenties; part is to discover such a risky project signed by the normally stodgy Alov and Naumov. "Based on a Dostoevsky story (also translated as 'The Bad Joke'), this tale of fake egalitarianism and the abuse of power had obvious contemporary resonances. A drunken general idealistically gatecrashes the wedding party of one of his subordinates-where he finds things too earthy to mention, and a collection of almost Hogarthian characters cavorting in gloriously composed black-and-white 'Scope." (Claire Kitson, London) Vladimir Naumov has remarked: "Dostoevsky wrote the story in 1862 shortly after serfdom had been abolished in Russia. His most important question was being hotly discussed at the time: is it possible to awaken the necessary social awareness to put the new reforms into practice? The question was topical in 1862; it was topical again in Khrushchev's era when we made the film; it is topical again now in the age of 'perestroika'. Are we capable of putting our desire for reform into practice?"