Forgotten Tune for the Flute (Забытая мелодия для флейты)

MOSFILM

Leonid FILATOV Tatiana DOGILEVA

Irina KUPCHENKO

in a film

FORGOTTEN TUNE FOR THE FLUTE

Directed by Eldar RYAZANOV

Screenplay by

Emil BRAGINSKY Eldar RYAZANOV

Director of Photography Vadim ALISSOV

Production Designer Alexander BORISOV

Music by Andrei PETROV

Lyrics by Yevgeny YEVTUSHENKO

Eldar RYAZANOV Yuri RYASHENTSEV

Also starring

Vsevolod SANAYEV Olga VOLKOVA

Sergey ARTSYBASHEV Alexander SHIRVINDT

Valentin GAFT Yelena MAYOROVA

Vatslav DVORZHETSKY Yelena FADEYEVA

Alexander PANKRATOV-CHYORNY

Pyotr MERKURYEV Yevgeny VOSKRESENSKY

Nina AGAPOVA Tatiana AGAFONOVA

Tatiana NOVITSKAYA

We neither sow nor build, we're subsisting

On taking pride in our social system.

We're people of paperwork stature,

We have always been and will be in nature.

Our work is hard and pernicious:

We must know what our boss wishes.

We must guess, agree, not object,

So our career wouldn't be wrecked.

To send a paper on its due course

You need courage and guile, of course.

A document to sign or authorize

Is like walking on a cornice of a high-rise.

We are never punished for refusals and bans,

Our offices are like armored tanks.

We burn out when we allow,

Therefore we forever disallow.

Nothing's stronger than the red-tape structure,

No 'perestroikas' can make in it any fracture.

We're functionaries, soldiers, gladiators

Of the colossal bureaucratic apparatus.

We're people of paperwork stature,

We have always been and will be in nature.

We neither sow nor build, we're subsisting

On taking pride in our social system.

Chief Directorate of Free Time

Well, Surova, go ahead and report

how the Directorate of Free Reading

is turning up the reading masses,

how it responds to the new demands.

I suggest to stand up and fight against the paper for recycling.

Let's just think about the nature of that phenomenon.

People hand in kilograms of our ideological literature by weight

in exchange for a book of a Simenon or a Dumas.

- A very questionable exchange. - Perhaps they hand in bad literature.

Perhaps bad, but the right one.

And how do you like it

when people come to a political literature store,

where books costjust kopecks,

buy heaps of editions and at once take them for exchange!

Outrageous!

We must fight it mercilessly! What measures do you suggest?

We must rouse the public and beat, beat the alarm!

We can set up posts at paper recycling

collection centers, with the help of the Book Lovers Society.

Let them check every printed word when accepting paper for recycling.

That's not enough.

We should make up a list of books prohibited for recycling.

Such lists are already being made up.

May I, Yaroslav Stepanovich?

We'll be glad to hear you.

Yes.

Frankly, I don't know where to begin.

- Say it bluntly. - Bluntly?

- Yes, our time calls for it. - Well...

You want it bluntly, you'll get it bluntly.

Yaroslav Stepanovich, you're like father to me.

But, excuse me, you're hopelessly behind the times.

You're a reactionary! You're a hindrance!

- Is that all? - That's all.

May I, Yaroslav Stepanovich?

We'll be glad to hear you.

Dear friends, we're living at the time

of the flourishing of glasnost and freedom, and that's great.

We prohibit nothing, we allow everything, and that's great too.

But our comrades in provinces are dumbfounded:

freedom is great, but how far can it go?

I believe it's time to start working on a document

which will define clearly

what our citizens can do in their free time

and what they must not do in their free time.

- Good for you! - That's my idea.

It's very difficult to work now. I'd like to get directives.

You'll get them.

I've invited you, gentlemen,

in order to give you a most unpleasant news:

an Inspector General is coming to our town!

- What inspector? - Why inspector?

An inspector from Petersburg!

Incognito! And with secret instructions!

- Well, I declare! - As if we need this trouble!

Oh, my goodness! And with secret instructions!

- ''Eh,'' I said to Pyotr Ivanovich... - No, it was I who said ''eh''!

First you said, and then I did.

''Eh,'' we said, Pyotr Ivanovich and I.

Yes, and he is exactly that official.

What official?

The official you received a notation about, the Inspector General.

God forbid, that's not him!

Our Mayor is an ambulance driver, by the way.

He's very convincing.

- Well, is the droshky there? - Yes, it is!

Let everyone take a street... damn, I mean a broom

and sweep the entire street leading to the inn,

and sweep it clean.

May I ask you where you were walking to?

Really, I wasn't walking anywhere.

And why, I daresay, were you not walking anywhere?

Oh, I disturbed you. You had an important business.

Your eyes are much better than an important business.

Oh, you talk like a man from the capital!

What a beautiful scarf you have!

What a mocker you are!

You just love to make fun of provincial people!

I wish, Madam, I were your scarf

embracing your lily-white neck!

I don't understand what you're talking about. What scarf?

The weather's so strange today!

Your lips, Madam, are better than any weather!

Marya Antonovna is a nurse working in your department.

- Yes, she looks familiar. - Very gifted, very.

And so pliable.

You're talking weird.

I would rather ask you to write in my album

some poems, as a keepsake.

You must know a lot of them.

Anything for you, Madam!

Make your wish! What poem do you want?

Our Khlestakov works as an orderly in a morgue.

- Where? - In a morgue.

He's very true to life.

As you like, Amos Fyodorovich.

- We must take some steps. - What exactly?

- Well, you know. - Give him a bribe?

Why not?

Allow me to introduce myself.

The districtjudge, Collegiate Assessor Lyapkin-Tyapkin.

I've spent all I had, you know, while on this trip, this and that...

Allow me to introduce myself, the postmaster,

Court Counselor Shpekin.

Can you lend me 300 rubles?

I'll deem it an honor.

Do you have any money to lend, about 400 rubles?

The official from Petersburg, who's arrived by an imperial order,

wants to see you at once.

He's staying at the inn!

- Well... thank you. - Thanks everybody.

Let's discuss it.

There's nothing to discuss. Mockery at the classics, discrediting the author.

We just wanted to bring the classics closer to modern day.

And that's why you put the Mayor in a Chaika?

It's not a Chaika, it's an automobile in general.

- You know what it's called? - Yes, we know.

The finger behind one's back. Barking from a cover.

In old time I would have closed

that theatrical hooliganism as early as the first act.

And you would've done the right thing.

Now times are different, everything is permitted.

Well, not everything...

Aren't you afraid of being mobbed by the spectators?

And they would be right.

Oh, we're not afraid of the spectators. With them we have no problems.

Lida is right.

You can come and see for yourself.

Well, if you're so brave...

Well, then, onward!

But we'll be crucified!

Just a minute, I understood everything, except one thing.

The Mayor has his hand bandaged. What are you hinting at?

Sasha has a finger broken.

Thank you. I appreciate your backing us up, Leonid Semyonovich.

Thank you very much.

We were so apprehensive about your visit. We thought you'd reject it.

- And you turned out... - Why?

Our duty is to support everything that is talented,

creatively unexpected and original.

What do we do with this?

I don't want to see it ever again.

I got you. Will do. It's not the first time, you know.

- Leonid Semyonovich... - How was your report?

Great. How's the weather in Leningrad? Excuse me.

Here's a form, fill it in, make two copies.

I've got people here. Give me a call before you come. I'll meet you.

A pleasant surprise. Where to?

Austria, a festival of amateur theatres.

My dear, aren't you tired of it?

I've been checked and rechecked on, I traveled abroad dozens of times.

If I ever wanted to defect, I would've done it long ago.

Why do I have to fill in those forms again and again?