Moscow on the Hudson (1984)

"Moscow On The Hudson" is a 1980s version of "The Wizard Of Oz." If you are an American watching it, there is no place like home.

Vladimir Ivanoff (Robin Williams) is a saxophonist with a Russian circus in the days of the bad old Soviet Union. Tired of waiting in line for toilet paper and bribing a snooping KGB agent (Saveli Kramarov) with shoes that won't fit him anyway, Vlad has a catharsis somewhere between Estee Lauder and Pierre Cardin in a Manhattan Bloomie's and decides to defect. America means freedom, but will it mean happiness, too?

"Have you ever felt like just not talking?" asks Vlad's new girlfriend Lucia (Maria Conchita Alonso).

"In Russia that's permanent way of life," answers Vlad.

"Moscow On The Hudson" is another of those superlative Paul Mazursky films that was a hit in its day and has been ignored since. Mazursky's films play off the contrast between the fantastic and everyday reality. The early scenes, of Vlad in Moscow, feature a chilly, brittle environment of little humor, with Williams scoring points not for being a cut-up but for being so muted and beaten-down. It's so gray it feels at times like a Bergman film, with welcome clownish notes struck not by Williams but Elya Baskin as his friend whose dream becomes Vlad's reality.

Then we get the trip to New York, a wondrous place where "you can do anything in this country if you want" but "everybody I meet is from somewhere else." A suddenly vibrant color scheme is married to a sometimes goofy sense of humor, yet a sense of menace and despair hangs over all. There are goofy scenes, moments of humor that don't quite work, yet Williams' performance remains balanced and straightforwardly character-driven throughout. No shtick here.

Most of the time, the film is too busy celebrating the idea of America as the land of immigrants. Mazursky isn't making "Yankee Doodle Dandy" here. He may be celebrating the United States, but not blindly. Our first shot of New York is of Abraham Lincoln, on a billboard wearing over-sized earphones with the legend: "Not all stereophones are created equal." Not all people, either. The black family who adopts Vlad early on makes do with a breakfast of Cocoa Puffs and no work in sight.

But Mazursky keeps things merry, with an eye toward opportunity and strength through diversity. Even when he leans too far in search of a shot, it still brings a chill, like when group of immigrants recite their oath of American allegiance or an old Asian guy lifts a sparkler up to the Empire State Building in celebration of the Fourth of July.

It was easy to love America in films of the 1940s and 1950s, but by 1984 you needed to work a little harder at it. "Moscow On The Hudson" doesn't soft-soap Vladimir's struggle, or sell it as a political act ("I'm not political" are the first words out of his mouth after his defection is made clear). But it celebrates the idea of America with a vibrancy and courage few films have shown since, and more interestingly, does so from what Roger Ebert noted was a liberal point of view. Liberal, but with a strong capitalist touch, back in the day when the two ideas were still compatible.

Maybe they still are. You can still watch this on Amazon.com, can't you?

Fmovies: Robin Williams became famous, I think, for his stand-up comedy, like his idol Jonathan Winters, but do you realize how many movies this guy has made over the years? He's really become quite a film star and is especially good playing against-type as a criminal or simply as a wacko (see "One Hour Photo?")

Anway, this was an early Robin Williams film in which he plays a Russian musician defecting to the United States. He ("Vladamir Ivanoff") first hides out in a big store in New York City before being taken in as an immigrant by a black guy (can you say PC?) Williams does an outstanding job speaking Russian, by the way, as opposed to most English-speaking actors.

There really isn't much of a plot here, just slices of life, if you will, some of it with the usual Liberal promiscuous (i.e. "I'm a liberated woman and if I stay the night, don't misinterpret that I want to get involved with you," the Italian tells the Russian. I can think of a few more accurate descriptions that the word "liberated.")

All in all, despite the premise and talents of Williams, this was only so-so. It kind of runs out of steam halfway through and it's hard to maintain interest in the final 40 percent of it. Actually, I like Williams better when he plays more serious roles like this although I'm not sure if he himself was ready to play it straight this early in his career. He's just too tempted in this film to produce comedy. He's a talented and very strange guy; this film reflects that.

Moscow on the Hudson is a fabulous example of a pretty-good movie chock full of 1980s artifacts like Jordache jeans, feathered hair-dos and Afro Sheen, that is often surprisingly interesting, sensitive and even occasionally profound -- especially on the level of the victory of the individual soul over totalitarianism, and the defense of American capitalism against Marxism.

This film brings back a flood of cultural memories of the Eighties, the decade immediately preceding the collapse of the Soviet Union, a time in the United States when our political and cultural self-esteem matched our economic prosperity. It doesn't hurt that this movie stars a young bearded Robin Williams with heart (and Russian soul!) and a really cute and occasionally nude young Maria Conchita Alonso (a real-life Venezuelan immigrant) full of Italian passion and an ambitious independent spirit.

Only in the early 1980s could blue jeans from Bloomies, velvety white toilet paper, supermarket coffee, studio apartments, hot-dog stands, cab-driving jobs, and U.S. citizenship ceremonies be portrayed as symbols -- indeed even weapons -- of democratic capitalism in a world still governed "from Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea" by the totalitarian evil against which President Ronald Reagan called a crusade two years earlier in his famous 1982 Evil Empire speech to the House of Commons.

The political content of the movie is startlingly black-and-white by today's standards of multiculturalism and moral relativism when many academics defend dictatorships' "sovereign right" to exist, and so the offhand manner with which at every turn the film's writers Paul Mazursky and Leon Capetanos deliver praise to political liberty, capitalism and America's unique cultural acceptance of immigrants dedicated to the pursuit of happiness is remarkable. While the way in which their praises are conveyed may from time-to-time seem a little cheesy, sentimental or dated, their profound significance is not diminished.

Exactly because capitalism is an economic system as well as a social system, Robin William's character is portrayed as a Russian seeking a remedy for his literal physical hunger and basic financial requirements of life that socialism fails to satisfy. His Russian friend, played wonderfully by Elya Baskin, suffers from socialism's other often dramatized evil -- its humiliating and paralyzing effect on an individual's creative mind and psychology. Perhaps it is precisely because the film's focus is on Williams' character that Moscow on the Hudson at times comes off as exhibiting the over-the-top 1980s commercialism that made it popular then and a little startling in today's Greener age.

Russophiles can get a kick out of some of the Russia scenes. Highlights include the drab Moscow Circus on Tsvetnoi Boulevard including full-figured women in polyester; sour old babushkas enforcing their place in line; and shoe vendors pushing the wrong sizes. They might also find some treatment of Soviet atrocities like sending war protesters to mental institutions, or neighbors reporting dissidents to the KGB a bit trite, but not inaccurate. Such horrors are no less relevant in Putin's Russia of today (October 2006), where the most recent contract killing of independent politicians, businessmen and intellectuals is journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

While I've focused on the political content, this movie is not primarily a political piece, but a love story; and not p

Moscow on the Hudson fmovies. I first saw this film when the Iron Curtain was still firmly in place and of course it was intriguing and funny. Seeing it again, I found it quite prescient if less intriguing and funny. Robin Williams plays a Muscovite who visits the Big Apple as part of a cultural troupe. On a visit to Bloomingdales, he suddenly decides to defect (a very spin is made on this term!). The rest of the film deals with his attempts to settle in the US.

Obviously given the great political changes in the USSR and Eastern Europe since the film was released, it has aged noticeably. However, it is not entirely without merit. The big plus is obviously Robin Williams. He was and is a great actor and seems to have put in great effort on his Russian and spoken English accents. Notice the way he says "Mister". The hot, hot, hot Maria Conchita Gonzalez (Miss Venezuela 1971) plays an Italian immigrant and the love interest. The overall bent of the film is liberal - African-American families are especially realistically and positively portrayed. The central lesson of the film is that the transition from a Communist to a Capitalist mentality is not easy and the adjustment can bring great joy and sorrow. That is a very valid lesson in the largest context of the later collapse of the USSR and the painful transition ex-Soviet states are still going through.

I cannot understand why this movie has received such a low rating of 6.2. I love Robin Williams when he is funny and also when he is serious. He is the best of actors and his performance in Moscow on the Hudson, as a Russian musician, is awesome. Cuban-born Maria Conchita Alonso also gives an excellent performance as the Italian young lady who falls in love with Williams. My recommendation: don't wait any longer, rent Moscow on the Hudson. You'll cry, you'll laugh, and you'll appreciate freedom. No matter how risky freedom could be, it's the only opportunity to be yourself.

Manhattan looks so much more varied and gritty and real and less mall-ified than it does today in this, Paul Mazursky's 1984 love letter to the American way, and one of the last unambiguously patriotic mainstream American movies. (It's very much a product of its Reagan time, right down to the casual homophobia.) Robin Williams, for once not twinkling too hard or overworking his virtuosity or adorableness, is an Everyman Russian who unexpectedly defects in Bloomingdale's and goes on to live the immigrant experience, suffering urban indignities and romantic angst along the way. His worklife is a little easier, his economic situation a little less treacherous, and the people he meets a little nicer than they would be in real life. For all that, in its celebration of the melting pot and its warm embrace of the American urban landscape, the movie moved me to tears.