Cinema
There Was a Singing Blackbird
იყო შაშვი მგალობელი
Otar Iosseliani · 1970
Synopsis
Guia Agladze is a timpanist in the Tbilisi symphony orchestra, where his part comes down to two strokes on the timpani, one at the start and the other at the end of the concert. Between his two entries he leaves the pit, runs around the city, meets friends, promises, forgets, courts women, and always comes back at the last moment. The next day he starts again, convinced he has all the time in the world.
Context
The Soviet authorities read in this portrait a eulogy of idleness. The work plays with devices that its author would return to all his life: a near-silent comedy of gesture, sounds out of step with the images they accompany, and the refusal to tie events together. The screenplay is written by six hands or more, the director co-signing with Dimitri Eristavi, Semyon Lungin, Ilya Nusinov, Otar Mekhrishvili and Shermazan Kakichashvili. The title is that of a popular song, and the orchestra pit serves as the fixed point around which everything else turns.
Who it is for
A short film, almost without plot, in subtitled Georgian. It helps to know that the lightness of tone is a deliberate choice and that nothing in it is explained to the viewer.
Prizes and reception
Banned from export in the Soviet Union, the film was eventually screened at the Cannes festival and distributed in France in 1974, four years after its release.