Well Deserved Praise

Excellent, a Must See

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Good actors, good directing, good plot. It would be only a good film, but two moments made this film great: that part with the song and their last date. Listening to "Eternal Love" you looking at all that woes, struggles, pains, sacrifices, deaths and you have some strange feeling, that somewhere in all this or somewhere behind all this, there really IS eternal Love. And their love story had a great truth about life in it. You met, then immediately lost each other, 30 years of parting, then you have one short date and… all good in your life is only short-lived dream and you will inevitably lose everything you love, you just have not any chance to save anything but memory. It is so sad, but again, you have the same filling (especially during the church scene), that there is eternal Love in this tragedy.

I am US born and raised. However at age 15 I lived in Guadalajara, Mexico, and was exposed to many items not available in the US. I remember taking Soviet made vitamins and there were some Cuban products that my family purchased at the supermarket. I also saw quite a few foreign movies and Tegeran-43, which came out on the big screen in Mexico in 1983, made a very impressionable impact on me.In particular, the music (score) used in the movie seemed to add to the drama and emotion drawn on by the actors. The plot that was going to be used to assassinate the big three was better than any James Bond movie plot I had seen to that date.I have casually looked for this movie here in the US for about ten years now but have never found it. I hope that now in today's DVD era, this movie becomes available or is available and I just haven't found it.

I regonized the faboulous acting between the russian and the western actors like the italian recensent. The Match between Belokhvostikova (Maries daughter Nathalie) and Alain Delon (Foche, who dies too early)in the Taxi and on the street or the suspensefull relation between Dzhigarkhanian (the old killer) and Claude Jade(Francoise), when Max trusts Francoise again and again - till he's killed and now she's full of scrupel during the Interrogatory by Curt Jurgens. Excellent also the score "Une vie d'amour".

One of the best Russian films of the 80-ies, a perfect wartimes spy thriller with ideology left aside. It has been nice to see how wonderfully russian and western actors interact in this 30 years-long saga, expecially Natalia Belochvostikova who makes a perfect match for Alain Delon. One of the best things is the soundtrack containing one of my favourite songs of Charles Aznavour.