The Girl from Petrovka (1974)

Just what I expected

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

A love story based on a novel by George Feifer, The Girl From Petrovka doesn't totally work but it doesn't totally fail either. The unfamiliar backdrop of Cold War-era Moscow - where paranoia and secrecy could be the difference between free life or a stint in a Siberian labour camp – adds something new and interesting to an otherwise familiar 'odd-couple' romance. The film benefits too from good performances, especially Hal Holbrook as the male lead, Goldie Hawn as the female lead, and Anthony Hopkins as a secretive wheeler-dealer who is a friend to them both. There is a remarkable story about Hopkins' role in the film which goes like this. When he learned he had got the part, he spent a day trawling through the second-hand bookshops of London in search of the original George Feifer novel which he wanted to read to get a better idea of the character. His search proved unsuccessful so he headed to the railway station to catch a train home… and there, on a seat, lay a discarded copy of the very book he had been looking for. More extraordinary still, when he opened it he discovered it had Feifer's name inside, and was a personal copy the author had mislaid some years earlier! American journalist Joe (Hal Holbrook) is a correspondent in Russia during the Cold War. Mourning the recent death of his wife, he decides to sell her belongings and asks his friend Kostya (Anthony Hopkins) to help him find a buyer. While selling off the things at a sort of unofficial bric-a-brac sale, Joe meets beautiful and mysterious ballerina Oktyabrina (Goldie Hawn). Oktyabrina lives in Moscow illegally, without the necessary papers, and runs the continual risk of being captured and sent to a labour camp by the authorities. Despite this, she is a vivacious and free-spirited individual whose carefree breeziness quickly attracts Joe. Beneath the façade, though, her personality proves a conundrum – outwardly warm yet privately stand- offish; eager to love yet simultaneously afraid of it. Eventually they do fall in love, but their relationship draws unwanted attention and leads to an unhappy outcome for the young ballerina.Nicely scored by Henry Mancini and grandly shot by Vilmos Zsigmond, the film is pleasant fare despite its rather lowly critical reputation. Holbrook is more of a character-actor than a leading man, and certainly not your typical romantic lead… nevertheless he is very good as the lonely and cynical reporter living in a place and a manner far removed from home. Hawn is surprisingly good too as the freewheeling ballerina, a rare serious role for her (complete with decent accent). Sometimes the script is a little hard to follow, especially since the ultra-secret and paperwork-obsessed aspect of Russian life depicted here altered dramatically when the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War came to an end. One can't help but suspect some familiarity with the book - or, at least, a detailed grasp of communist policies and lifestyles at that time - might be necessary for the viewer to fully appreciate the finer points of several scenes. The film's downbeat climax certainly packs an emotional wallop, however… and overall it provides a diverting couple of hours' viewing. A likable curiosity.

When I saw this title on the TV didn’t know what to expect. Anthony Hopkins with Goldie Hawn and Hal Holbrook…It was enough for me so I decided to stay up (it was late at night) and watch it! I didn’t regret it. I saw Goldie Hawn in a role that I am not used seeing her in. Anthony Hopkins acting was really different from what I am used too and Hal Holbrook was great as well. The story was really crazy but decent and I didn’t find a lot of comic elements. It is about an American journalist falling in love with a Russian woman who was an outcast. It takes place in the Soviet Union and it has a really dramatic touch. Although it is a romantic film, I wouldn’t call it a chick flick. The story is really great and I hope that if you get a chance to see this one you will really like it.

The film is excellent. It invoked my personal associations of living in the USSR at the time shown in the film.At that time I was a so-called "refusenick', i.e. a person whose application for emigration was denied. One of my close friend, a lady whose name was Nadezhda (Nadya) Fradkova, was imprisoned for the same reason as Oktyabrina from the movie was: a so-called "parasitic" way of life. She was sentenced to two years in labor camps. It happened in December 1984 - 10 years after the film was released. At that time I was fighting the Soviets in the courtrooms and was able to acquire significant judicial knowledge. That knowledge helped me to fight for Nadya and to prove her innocence. In my own archive I keep original documents from the Soviets illustrating my fight for Nadya, the fight that occurred to be successful. Another association with the main character of the film, a very painful association, was a loss of my dear friend. She was allowed to emigrate, and I was doomed to fight for my freedom for the next 10 years. My best wishes to Goldie Hawn whose performance was above any praise. If I could only tell her my admiration with her performance along with my own history, the history which resembles so much the one of the film. I sorry only for seeing that film so late and only by accident. Mark Reznik. [email protected].

I just saw this film for the first time. While Goldie Hawn's Russian accent left a lot to be desired, I found this an entertaining story. Hal Holbrook was great, of course. I thought the Soviet background was fairly well presented of it's 1970's time period. While this was the "Cold War" period, one should not mistake this film for some spy vs. spy story. It is a love story set against the background of the Soviet Union. Some of Goldie's character motivation seem a bit odd at times, I will say. Perhaps another film where if one read the book, some of the character development details would be filled in and better understood. While one recommendation here for a similar story was, "Reds," I would say the 1980's film, "White Nights," with Gregory Hines would be a much better comparison.