The Steamroller and the Violin (1961) on Netflix
Sasha, seven, practices the violin daily while the boys in his building bully him for it. Then Sergei, a steamroller driver resurfacing the asphalt nearby, tells them to leave him alone.
- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb7.4/107,982 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes92%
Plot summary
In Moscow, a seven-year-old boy named Sasha practices the violin daily, pushed by his parents' ambition. The routines have left him withdrawn. Children his own age in the building shun him and bully him for being a musician, so he runs past them on the way to his lessons at the music school, where he plays beautifully. His teacher cares about form and order and keeps him to a metronome. One day Sergei, the operator of a steamroller resurfacing the asphalt near the building, tells the boys to leave Sasha alone. Sasha stays and watches as Sergei works on the road roller.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Steamroller and the Violin (1961)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- For his diploma film, Tarkovsky, then an unknown student, wanted the well-known cinematographer Sergey Urusevsky, but Urusevsky turned him down, so he hired Vadim Yusov, who went on to shoot Ivan's Childhood and Andrei Rublev.
- Two scenes from the early script drafts were left out of the final shooting script; a May Day parade rehearsal with tanks rolling along the street was dropped in favour of the demolition scene, because it was meant to evoke Sergey's wartime memories.
