The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966) is on TV right now. According to the Wikipedia article, ‘It was one of the few American films of the time to portray the Russians in a positive light.’
What other Cold War-era films showed the Soviet Union in a positive light? I think Fail Safe doesn’t show them in a negative light, but I don’t see them as being depicted positively. (I may change my mind based on answers here.) Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb shows them to be as corrupt and inept as the U.S., though they are the victims.
So… What are the ‘few American films’ Wikipedia is talking about?
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I don’t remember Gorky Park being particularly anti-Soviet, despite being set in Moscow. I’m not sure that the portrayal of the country was altogether positive, though. Maybe someone with a better memory can say more.
Oh, and how about Reds? I think it takes an altogether positive view of the 1917 revolution that led to the founding of the USSR, even if it was critical of the policies later enacted by the Bolsheviks.
It was “positive” in the sense of showing sympathetic Russians bearing up under the weight of their overbearing, corrupt government masters (similar to a later, non-Cold War era film, K-19: The Widowmaker).
Given the end of the movie, one might say that eveyone was the victims. :eek:
I guess there’s Red Heat, the buddy-cop movie where Schwarzenegger is top billed as “Moscow’s toughest detective”: comes to America to bring a crook to justice, notes what he sees as Western shortcomings, gets the job done action-hero style — he’s maybe short on official police powers during his visit, limiting his gunplay options, but his muscles are supermannish — and leaves (a) with no sign that he’s tempted to defect; but (b) while initiating a souvenir exchange, as a show of friendship.
There was an early 1980’s movie where a bunch of pre-teen kids who liked to get together and play army (I am pretty sure that one of the child actors was Peter Billingsley from “A Christmas Story”) ended up capturing a marooned Soviet sailor who washed ashore in America, at that time a vile, vindictive country blinded by a savage patriotic hatred for all things Russian. The sympathetic sailor was humanized as being little more than a child himself, and he showed the kids he was no different than they were, with Very Imporant Lessons in tolerance, peace and acceptance (with more than a little bit of the not-so-subtle decrying of good olde fashioned American bigotry & xenophobia thrown in for good measure) learned by all.
In the 1980s Columbia Pictures was working on a biopic of Samantha Smith, the child peace activist who wrote a letter to Yuri Andropov and subsequently accepted his invitation to visit the Soviet Union. The film never got made, though if it had it would be hard to imagine how it could have painted the Soviets as the villains.
The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966) is on TV right now. According to the Wikipedia article, ‘It was one of the few American films of the time to portray the Russians in a positive light.’/QUOTE]
A nice film. Which begs the question, did Russian citizens ever get to see it? And what did they think of it?
Funeral in Berlin (1966) & Billion Dollar Brain (1967) - Oskar Homolka as “Colonel Stok” is not really a villain so much as as a playa’ in international espionage. He actually helps Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) in the latter flick.
Telefon (1977) - Charles Bronson as heroic Russian officer out to stop a rogue Soviet agent from triggering WWIII.
The Hunt for Red October (1990) - Heroic Soviet defectors on a sub. Rocky IV (1985) - I root against Stallone on principle…
Prior to the Cold War, unusually sympathetic treatment of Russians occur in Mission to Moscow (1943) and* Song of Russia *(1944).
For comparisons, see: The villain gap: Why Soviet movies rarely had American bad guys
Silk Stockings, the 1957 musical remake of Ninotchka, makes the Russians stuffy and puritanical but that’s played for comedy. They aren’t evil, they just need a taste of western decadence to be human.
I recall reading elsewhere that it did have at least a limited release in the USSR, and audiences loved the fact that the Russians were depicted as being every bit as incompetent as the imperialist lackeys.
I think that it’s not only one of the few movies with a softer Cold War message but also, I think, possibly the last Cold War movie put out by Hollywood. WarGames was 3 years earlier, Rocky was 2 years earlier.
I saw it on DVD and there was a commentary in which it’s mentioned that the film was shown to some Soviet embassy personnel. They were very agitated at the climax, and loudly approved of how it was resolved, firstly between the Russians and the townspeople, and then the “escort” at the end.
I’ve not seen the latter, but I can say without reservation that the former was pure American wartime propaganda. As was The North Star (1943) with a very young Anne Baxter.
In You Only Live Twice, Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts help James Bond defeat Blofeld’s attempt to start a war between the US and USSR.