Volga - Volga (1938) on Netflix
Letter carrier Dunya Petrova, known as Arrow, wants to be a singer in Melkovodsk on the Volga. A call for amateurs sends two rival groups racing to the Moscow Musical Olympiad.
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- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.6/10875 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Plot summary
In Melkovodsk, a provincial city on the Volga, Dunya Petrova carries the mail and wants to be a singer. She brings Ivan Byvalov, who runs a small handicraft industry there, a message from Moscow: the capital needs amateur performers for the Moscow Musical Olympiad. Byvalov answers that Melkovodsk has no musical talent and that he can send nobody, so Arrow leads the townspeople in songs and dances meant to prove him wrong. Once he realizes the trip could take him to Moscow, he agrees to send performers. Arrow's boyfriend Alesha Trubyshkin, a classical orchestra conductor, has insulted her songwriting, and she has broken up with him. Two groups board a paddle-wheeler, one led by Trubyshkin and one by Arrow, and Byvalov orders Arrow's group off the ship.
Cast
Show all 20 cast
- Alexei Dolininas The Militia Man(A. G. Dolinin)
- Lidiya Vinogradovaas Amateur Performer(uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Volga - Volga (1938)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Grigori Aleksandrov named the film after the folk song Stenka Razin, which he sang while rowing with Charlie Chaplin in San Francisco Bay; Chaplin jokingly suggested the words as a movie title, but Aleksandrov took him seriously and used them for Volga-Volga.
- Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin was said to consider Volga-Volga his favourite film; Grigori Aleksandrov claimed Stalin watched it so often he could recite many of its lines from memory, and Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that Stalin laughed at him for resembling a character from it.
- A 1961 re-release of the film cut the ship named after Joseph Stalin, taking the Soviet leader's name out of the movie.
- The film's clash between supporters of classical and contemporary music came from an earlier script that was never given a green light, and Lyubov Orlova played the opposite of her part in that abandoned script, Katya Muratova.
