In this entertaining fantasy from the Soviet era, a brilliant pianist is expelled from the
music academy because of his passion for decadent
American jazz
Only in a Woody Allen film will you hear quite as much Dixieland jazz as this. Here is We Are from Jazz, or We Are Jazzmen, the zany jazz
comedy musical from
Russian director Karen Shakhnazarov, originally released in 1983, but now revived as part of the Melodia! festival of Russian musicals at London’s BFI Southbank and Ciné Lumière.
Shakhnazarov is now a rather establishment figure in Putin’s
Russia as director general of the official Mosfilm studios and supporter of the party line, but his breakthrough film showed him to be a sprightly, subversive, comic talent – a tweaker of authority’s nose. His story imagines the birth of jazz in the Soviet Union, and it has the spirit of
Hollywood movies such as George Roy Hill’s The Sting or even Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot.