This fascinating compilation film presents a wide range of footage from the twenties through the fifties, newly retrieved from Soviet archives: never-before seen images of the Korean War and the invasion of Hungary are intercut with shots of the 1957 Moscow Film Festival; Giulietta Masina waves at admirers as enormous floats recreate scenes from Battleship Potemkin and other Soviet classics. Interwoven with this material are excerpts from Alexander Razumnyi's The Case of Corporal Kotchetkov, a 1955 feature which proves as unintentionally hilarious as America's "Red Scare" films. Providing a further level of ironic commentary on this probably typical bit of patriotic claptrap are snatches of Soviet "popular science" films. Alongside the irreverent fun are sequences (such as Sergei Eisenstein on his deathbed) which offer chilling reminders of how effectively Stalinism moved to crush the avant-garde and replace it with kitsch.-Peter Scarlet, S.F. Int'l Film Festival