During the years of the Soviet Union, it was common to see Soviet cinema films on Polish television. To remind myself of those years, today I watched a film from 1975 directed by Leonid Gaidaj under the title “Не может быть!”. Literally translated from Russian into Polish – “It’s impossible!”.
The film consists of three short stories. The first story concerns the Stalinist period, where the main character receives a summons to the prosecutor’s office. It was known at the time that if a ‘nice’ functionary in a cap with a red star came for someone and invited him to the prosecutor’s office, it meant that he would surely end up in prison, a penal colony somewhere in deep Russia. And so did the poor citizen, thinking the worst. This first story, in which one day was shown every now and then, hour after hour, describes the nightmare of existence of a population that did not know the day or the hour. The wife of the summoned person, it can be said that within two to three hours, she had sold off all her possessions, starting with clothes, furniture, and ending with tableware. In her mind she had her neighbour’s words “confiscation of all property”. In order not to fall into total poverty, she quickly went to the registry office to divorce her unsuspecting husband and marry her neighbour, who had previously bought her clothes from her ‘ex’ husband. The most interesting moment for everyone, however, was when the husband comes back from the prosecutor’s office cheerful and enters the house where nothing is left and sees his wife with her new husband. This is the paranoia of the Stalinist era, in which no one knew the day or the hour.
The next story, ‘An amusing adventure’, describes the marital infidelities that occurred among the population living in the so-called ‘communal dwellings’, and the last story, ‘An incident at the wedding’, depicts a young fiancé who wants to marry a girl he has only met on the street, dressed in a coat and a cap on her head, and when he comes to see her at home – he cannot recognise her and many hilarious situations occur.
You are cordially invited to watch this film.
