Moscow on the Hudson

Powerful film, powerful acting, powerful message

… I was watching Paul Mazursky’s “Moscow on the Hudson,” a wonderful movie about a man who defects to the United States. His name is Vladimir Ivanoff, he plays the saxophone in a Russian circus, and when the circus visits New York, he falls in love with the United States and defects by turning himself in to a security guard at Bloomingdale’s. The Russian is played by Robin Williams, who disappears so completely into his quirky, lovable, complicated character that he’s quite plausible as a Russian. 

The movie opens with his life in Moscow, a city of overcrowded apartments, bureaucratic red tape, long lines for consumer goods, secret pleasures like jazz records, and shortages so acute that toilet paper has turned into a currency of its own. The early scenes are eerily convincing, partly because Williams plays them in Russian. This isn’t one of those movies where everybody somehow speaks English. 

They’re a tip-off to an interesting casting decision by Mazursky, who populates his movie almost entirely with ethnic and racial minorities. In addition to the black and the Italian, there’s a Korean taxi driver, a Cuban lawyer, a Chinese anchorwoman, all of them reminders that all of us, except for American Indians, came from somewhere else.

“Moscow on the Hudson” is the kind of movie that Paul Mazursky does especially well. It’s a comedy that finds most of its laughs in the close observations of human behavior, and that finds its story in a contemporary subject Mazursky has some thoughts about.

It is also a rarity, a patriotic film that has a liberal, rather than a conservative, heart. It made me feel good to be an American, and good that Vladimir Ivanoff was going to be one, too.

By Roger Ebert  

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. He is the only film critic with a star on Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame and was named honorary life member of the Directors’ Guild of America. He won the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Screenwriters’ Guild, and honorary degrees from the American Film Institute and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

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