Welcome, or No Trespassing

MOVIE #1,373 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 02.14.24 Two incredibly different selections here on WATCHLIST WEDNESDAY, everybody's favorite Wednesday and, to some (read: me), the only Wednesday. I admit to not giving this one — a 60-year-old Soviet comedy by the director of Come and See — my full attention. But in my defense, the subtitles seemed off, just slightly, as if translated by someone who barely spoke English (see below). But that's fine. Barely is better than me, si? Affirmative. Carry on. I couldn't quite get a handle on this place they called the colony, as a result, even though it seemed pretty simple: ½ children's spa, ½ orphanage, ½ social experiment gone wrong (or right, for that matter). Many mothers came on Father's Day and who could blame them in this black-and-white 1964. Comedy is tricky to translate in this gap of time and space regardless of what language we speak.

Can't argue with whatever's happening here, though...


Or here...


And let us never forget to never forget this, umm, interesting factoid…


The film ends with a 4th-wall-breaking kid telling us that the movie is over. And so it was.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,372 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,373 ⫸

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Welcome, or No Trespassing (Russian: Добро пожаловать, или Посторонним вход воспрещён, romanized: Dobro pozhalovat, ili Postoronnim vkhod vospreshchyon) is a 1964 Soviet satirical comedy film directed by Elem Klimov about the excessive restrictions that children face during their vacation in a Young Pioneer camp, imposed by their masters. Most of the cast are children, while the protagonist is the director Dynin, played by Yevgeniy Yevstigneyev. The film was selected to be screened in the Cannes Classics section of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. It was released on October 24, 1964.