Tsirk zazhigayet ogni (1972) Online

Let's say it's a second rate TV film. It's interesting for several reasons - two excellent actors, Galina Orlova (who, unfortunately for the woman of such beauty and talent, played only one major movie role three years later) and the great comedian Vladimir Etush save it. Most other actors, including Ludmila Gurchenko (she was virtually banned from filming at that period, so she had to earn her bread) are colorless or too plain. It was filmed in Riga (lots of nice city footage, interesting old cars) and based on an obsolete Soviet operetta from 1960. So this film contains a lot of 50s-style singing, dancing, also interesting footage of old Soviet circus. As in many other Soviet films, the "foreign country" where it's placed is actually a kind of a fairytale land, populated with greedy capitalists, naive poor youth, stupid villains, and throwing all cultures from Spain to Turkey into one weird mixture. Those who like the country in "Chelovek-Amfibiya" or "Brilliantovaya Ruka" may also like this. Well, it's a fairytale ...extremely naive but also extremely kind, and the movies will never be like that again.