Like the French and other New Waves of the time, the new Soviet cinema of the '60s often featured a bold mixture of documentary and fiction, making each film an invaluable record of its moment. A kind of Soviet Masculin Feminine, July Rain is an engaging portrait of '60s Moscow youth—the first generation to have grown up far from the shadows of war and Stalinist repression. Lena (Yevgeniya Uralova) and Volodya (Aleksandr Belyavsky) are a young couple in the throes of marriage when Lena decides that her fiance is not the man she thought he was. The break-up causes her to reflect on her life and to wonder about the kind of world she and other members of her generation are set to inherit. Then, during a cooling rain, she meets Zhenya... Endowed with a loose, spontaneous feeling, July Rain is full of small but telling incidents, as well as surprising observations of life in Moscow. The well-loved soundtrack features the work of Yuri Vizbor (who also plays one of the major roles), Bulat Okudjava and other pop superstars of the '60s. 35mm
1966, color, 1 hour 49 minutes, USSR