USSR
3*
Director:
Otar Iosseliani
Screenwriters:
Dimitri Eristavi
Otar Iosseliani
Sh. Kakichashvili
Semyon Lungin
Otar Mekhrishvili
Ilya Nusinov
Director of Photography:
Avtandil Maisuradze
Running time: 78 minutes
Original title: იყო შაშვი მგალობელი
Transliterated title: Iko shashvi mgalobeli
It’s not an objection critics often have, but in this case, it is absolutely valid: Once Upon a Time There Was a Singing Blackbird is a nice enough film but could have been a truly engaging film had it only been about 30 minutes longer. At 78 minutes, the film tells a small story of about 36 hours in the life of young orchestra percussionist Guia Agladze (Gela Kandelaki), whose charm might or might not be illusionary, but it skips between so many different parts of the story that no firm connection with anyone else is ever established, except his mother with whom he shares an apartment.
The film has an energetic opening, where the main thrust of the plot is also quickly set up and Guia’s character is sharply drawn as one who likes to take chances and usually gets away with being so flippant about serious matters. This is, of course, something that will come back in the final scene. Rushing up the grand staircase of a theatre in Tbilisi with a girl, Guia leaves her behind and worms his way through backstage corridors while putting on his jacket en doing his wait and finally reaches the door that leads onto the stage, where the number performed by a large orchestra is reaching its climax. He sits down in an empty seat, some of the musicians knowingly snicker at him and his antics, and then he takes on an air of seriousness, picks up his beaters and beats the kettle drum in front of him at exactly the right moment.
Guia quickly gets rid of the girl, as we assume he done so often before, and decides to try to find a place for him and his friends to drink. He fails to make up to another girl who has a big place but who hasn’t forgiven him yet for some past indiscretion and he ends up going to bed alone, the very intrusive sounds of planes, trains and automobiles outside his window.
He seems to be a composer, but having drawn the clef on the left of the sheet, he quickly loses interest and decides to go looking for fund outside, where he either notices girls he fancies or meets girls he has been with in the past. The crisp black and white images certainly contribute to the impression one has the film is taking place in the 1950s rather than the 1970s, but the very happy-go-lucky attitude of the central character also harkens back to characters such as Fellini’s I vitelloni.
Two incidents are important and keep us interested: The first is Guia’s constant tardiness and our fear he might once be too late and cause total chaos. The other is the appointment between him and the theatre director that keeps getting pushed back but which ought to be, by all accounts, a very important meeting and should provide the film with some fireworks.
But we get no fireworks, except for one very funny but out-of-place scene in which the camera cuts wildly from an apartment whose tenants are fighting and one guy is pushed, his back hits the railing and sends a pot plant flying off the balcony, to the street where Guia narrowly misses the plant that comes crashing down to earth. In general, director Iosseliani’s camera thinks of itself as having omnipresent powers and easily cuts between walls and even between floors, creating shots with unknown characters that also result in a complete lack of anticipation, since the viewer always knows what is coming.
Again, the lone exception is the final scene, but although it is visually well-presented, it does not make up for the very loose, jumpy character of the rest of the film, in which characters come and go and we have no way of figuring out Guia’s connection to most of them. Guia shows absolutely no character development and while the film is short enough to enjoy, despite some bad acting and rather inept use of the camera (in one scene, the camera pans and zooms in on faces as if testing out this new technology), there is far too little substance to the production.