"Andrei Tarkovsky's diploma film, made during his final year at the Moscow Film Institute, was influenced by Albert Lamorisse's classic short, The Red Balloon. It is a wordless evocation of a child's lyric view of everyday life, with the city of Moscow imbued with fresh, pastel-colored imagery. A little boy, a violin student, walks through the streets with the vision of a poet, and his encounter with a steamroller, laying asphalt along one of the roads, becomes a magic episode. The young workman who drives the vehicle symbolizes the strange, vigorous world of labor, of work far removed from the child's everyday world of family, comfort, and music. The man sees in the child, a distant part of himself and Tarkovsky delineates the rapport between the two with charm and visual imagery that delights the senses. There is an unforgettable, dreamlike vision of a crumbling edifice that presages Tarkovsky's unique mastery of cinematic surprise. This student film already exhibits the themes that were to preoccupy Tarkovsky through his later works: man's sense of vocation, life and art, friendship and love." -Albert Johnson