THE SCHOOL WALTZ (SHKOLNYY VALS)
USSR, 1978, 96 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Pavel Liubimov.
Also called Commencement. It would be fairly conventional material if the film came from the United States. However, the film is from the Soviet Union and portrays school-age adolescents in their final year and in the year after school. The similarities with adolescents all over the world are very evident. However, while the production is attractive and colourful, the material is fairly conventional and rendered somewhat implausible by gaps in the screen play. Of interest an an expression of attitudes from Russia in the late seventies.
1. The quality of Russian production, style? The film for a Russian audience, international audience?
2. Colour photography, wide screen, the presentation of Moscow, the city, locations etc.? The score?
3. The structure of the film: one year In the life of the adolescents, the home movies at start and finish? The identification with the main characters and their experiences over one year, the changes in their lives?
4. The picture of school, study, the attention to detail in the way of life at school? The students and their hopes, ambitions?
5. Zonya - as heroine, an attractive girl, her role in the school, her love for Gosha? The wariness of Dina? The outings with Gosha, the night spent with him, her pregnancy? Life at home, the reaction of her parents? Her leaving home, working? Friends with girls at work? Her keeping out of Gosha’s way after their breaking up? Her ability to cope? The birth, trying to got her parents to re-unite? Gosha’s ignorance of the baby? Her visit to the school and the watching of the films? Her love for Gosha? What future?
6. Gosha an hero? An attractive young man? His ambitions, the significance of the volcano through the credits? His type? Attraction to Zonya? The superficiality of their relationship, his spending the night, losing interest in her? The coldness and his drifting apart? His falling a prey to Dina? His behaviour at the dance? His ignorance of the pregnancy? His going through the marriage ceremony, his School Waltz unhappiness, the break-up of the marriage, the encounter with Zonya? How sympathetic was the screenplay towards him and his behaviour?
7. Dina an an attractive girl, type? Her pursuit of Gosha, her attitudes towards Zonya? Her arranging of the dinner and her rudeness to Zonya? Her trying to get Gosha for herself? The dance? The marriage and the happiness but wariness? Her unhappiness at home? Her realizing what had happened?
8. Zonya’s parents and the attention to detail - her mother on the phone, father watching television, the break-up? Their relationships and liaisons? Coming together for the birth of the child? The possibility of reconciliation or not?
9. The contrast with Dina’s parents and the military background, entertaining at home? The long marriage sequence and the build-up? The presentation of Dina’s parents?
10. The portrait of the friends at school, after school, outings otc.?
11. The set scenes and their effect, the opening sequences at school? Dina’s meal? The dance? The swimming outing? The sport sequences? The marriage sequence?
12. The finale and the reunion of the young people. their watching the film? The ironies of seeing them a year earlier especially Zonya?
13. What basic human values and attitudes did the film endorse? Communicate?
