Editing Musical film (section)

===''Volga-Volga''===
[[File:Volga-volga.jpg|thumb|right|''[[Volga-Volga]]'', directed by [[Grigori Aleksandrov]]]]
The most popular film of the brief era of Stalinist musicals was Alexandrov's 1938 film ''[[Volga-Volga]]''. The star, again, was Lyubov Orlova and the film featured singing and dancing, having nothing to do with work. It is the most unusual of its type. The plot surrounds a love story between two individuals who want to play music. They are unrepresentative of Soviet values in that their focus is more on their music than their jobs. The gags poke fun at the local authorities and bureaucracy. There is no glorification of industry since it takes place in a small rural village. Work is not glorified either, since the plot revolves around a group of villagers using their vacation time to go on a trip up the [[Volga]] and [[Moscow Canal]] to perform in Moscow. The film can be seen as a glorification of Moscow canal without any hint that the canal was built by [[Gulag]] prisoners.

''Volga-Volga'' followed the aesthetic principles of Socialist Realism rather than the ideological tenets. It became Stalin's favorite film and he gave it as a gift to President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Roosevelt]] during [[WWII]]. It is another example of one of the films that claimed life is better. Released at the height of Stalin's purges, it provided escapism and a comforting illusion for the public.<ref>Svetlana Boym, ''Common Places''  (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 200-201. {{ISBN|9780674146266}}; and Birgit Beumers, ''A History of Russian Cinema'' (Oxford: Berg, 2009). {{ISBN|9781845202149}}
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