Goodbye, Boys!

Do svidaniya, malchiki!

Soviet Union

1964

82 Min

Black and White

Russian

Currently 4.6/5 Stars.
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SCR Boris Balter, Mikhail Kalik

CAST Natalya Bogunova, Yevgeni Steblov, Anna Rodionova, Nikolai Dostal, Mikhail Kononov

Goodbye, Boys! is the coming-of-age tale of three teenagers graduating from a Communist school during World War II. It’s summer, and their main goals are swimming in the Black Sea and wooing the girl all three of them love. However, they are asked to become officers in the military, and slowly their worlds begin changing forever. Their parents oppose them, they begin fearing losing each other and their families, and the military tricks and maneuvers them into joining the army instead of the navy. —IMDb

Director

Mikhail Kalik

Underappreciated and embattled in the Soviet Union, Kalik managed to make several of the most respected films of his era before defecting in 1971. At the age of 24, while attending the State Institute for Cinematography, he was arrested for anti-Soviet terrorist and “Zionist” activity and sent to the Gulag. Kalik was released in 1954— soon after Stalin’s death— and promptly resumed his film career. His first major success was Man Follows the Sun, a poetic evocation of a child’s self-discovery over the course of a single day. His follow-up, Goodbye, Boys, also dwelled on youth, but to a much darker effect. An archetypal beach-set love triangle, Goodbye, Boys is situated in the days before the Second World War, but told from a knowing, melancholy post-war perspective that doesn’t mute the pain of innocence— and lives—lost. Held up by censors and given a limited release, it began another contentious phase of Kalik’s career, culminating in his defection to Israel. After Three and One, a… read more