Mosfilm: Welcome, or No Trespassing (1964) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Mosfilm

Many decades before unleashing Hellfire and brimstone on Earth with his final film the globally searing 1985 Belarusian WWII through the eyes of a child shocker Come and See, an incredibly important Soviet film cinephiles almost dare one another to sit through, Russian filmmaker Elem Klimov made his Mosfilm screen debut with an altogether different kind of film involving kids: the family comedy.  That’s right, the first film from the director of Come and See just so happened to be a children’s summer camp dramedy entitled Welcome, or No Trespassing or as it was retitled in the United Kingdom No Holiday for Inochkin: a delightful, heartfelt and technically brilliant romp sure to put a smile on your face.

 

 
While dissimilar in tone and target audience with the playful and whimsical coming-of-age summer camp comedy tickling ribs and tugging at heartstrings, studied fans of Klimov’s oeuvre and particularly Come and See won’t help but notice structural similarities and recurring leitmotifs established early on with Klimov’s debut including but not limited to kids wandering the woods amid gazing skyward at airplanes, Russian dancing and boiling hot kettle baths.  At once the antithesis of (and blueprint for) the legendary WWII epic, Welcome, or No Trespassing is the M. Hulot’s Holiday of beached summer camp vacation movies which doesn’t have a mean bone in its body.
 
At the Soviet Young Pioneer camp, formal by-the-book administrative head Comrade Dynin (Yevgeniy Yevstigneyev) fearful of the safety of the schoolchildren rules over the camp with an iron authoritative fist, imposing restrictions on the kids and other teachers including but not limited to group leader Valia (Arina Aleynikova), the gym teacher and even the camp’s doctor.  One bright sunny day as the kids are swimming in the lake, young kid Inochkin (Viktor Kosykh) decides to break a rule by swimming past the designated area to the an island across the way.  Expelled by Dynin effective immediately and sent home, Inochkin fears the news will trigger his legal guardian grandmother’s death so he sneaks back onto the camp grounds and hides there, creating all manner of comedy of hide and go seek errors and increasingly playful senses of magical realism.

 
Written by Semyon Lungin and Ilya Nusinov, the black-and-white shot Welcome, or No Trespassing makes a strong companion piece to another color Soviet era kids movie from Czechoslovakia called When the Cat Comes or The Cassandra Cat.  Both visually inventive movies that experiment with technique while funneling in a youthful energy that speaks to creative freedom of expression, Elem Klimov’s delightful first foray into film directing is a cute and fun coming-of-age flick that flirts with notions of fantasy or heightened reality not dissimilar from Miracle in Milan’s grand finale. 
 
Filled with a wild variety of visual innovation from Three Came Out of the Woods cinematographer Anatoliy Kuznetsov including an aerial shot that barrels across a beach full of patrons to land on a kid looking directly into the camera Ferris Bueller’s Day Off surely lifted from, the sense of visual flair throughout the film is increasingly exciting.  Also key to the whimsical wonderland vibe of the film are soundtrack composers Mikael Tariverdiev and Igor Yakushenko who dial up the fun with an energetic piano-infused soundtrack. There’s also a wealth of playfulness with the sound design such as a doctor calling for help and Klimov cuts to her open mouth agape as the sounds of air raid sirens come out.

 
Acting wise, the ensemble young and old cast is splendid with recurring Karen Shakhnazarov favorite Yevgeniy Yevstigneyev making a formidable screen debut as the uptight prim and proper camp leader.  Condescending, self-satisfied, petty and a bit power mad, Yevstigneyev makes Dynin into a character everyone by the end of the movie seems to hate.  Also making his screen debut is child actor Viktor Kosykh in the role of Inochkin who serves for the audience as the kid at heart in all of us and would go onto to a prolific film acting career himself.  Arina Aleynikova as the camp leader who can see her stuck up boss is too hard on the kids is a warm and comforting presence onscreen.  Much of the rest of the cast consists of many child actors forming a populated summer camp body, making this into perhaps a kind of Russian The Little Rascals comedy?  Whatever the case, everyone gives it their all and Yevstigneyev in his first movie proves himself a force to be reckoned with.
 
Despite running into some controversy involving brief nudity of the child actors in a scene where the kids pretend to be sick with rashes, the film passed through Soviet censorship largely untouched with even a few snarky jabs at the expense of the end of Khrushchev’s tenure getting by without raising much eyebrows.  While clearly satirical and therefore subversive, Welcome, or No Trespassing functions successfully as a satirical kids summer camp comedy in what soon would become a comedy subgenre unto itself. 

 
Clever, witty and even goofily strange at times, this light jog through the open waters and earthy campgrounds is the complete opposite end of the spectrum of what would or would not become Elem Klimov’s final work.  On its own, Welcome, or No Trespassing is a happy family friendly comedy with a little tongue-in-cheek snark about strict adult supervisors of minors.  Seen in the context of the director’s complicated legacy including but not limited to a devoted marriage to equally great Soviet director Larisa Shepitko who tragically perished while scouting her next film, this summer camp comedy points to happier days in Klimov’s lifetime and perhaps functions as a semi-autobiographical daydream of summer days and swimming.  The film’s cool lakeside summer breeze almost blows off the screen into the theater.

--Andrew Kotwicki