About the film
Anatoly Novoseltsev is a shy single father buried in paperwork at a Moscow statistics bureau. His old friend Samokhvalov, now a deputy director, suggests a cynical shortcut to a promotion: flirt with the director, Lyudmila Kalugina, whom the whole office calls 'our old crow'.
The plan goes wrong in every possible way, and that is where Ryazanov finds the film's warmth. Behind Kalugina's grey suits is a lonely woman who has given everything to work, and behind Novoseltsev's stammer is a man with more courage than he knows. Alisa Freindlikh's transformation from tyrant to woman in love is one of the great performances of Soviet cinema.
Office Romance was the most watched film in the USSR in 1978. Its satire of office life, from endless tea breaks to the shopping trips made in work hours, still lands with anyone who has worked in a big organisation.
Did you know?
- Around 58 million people saw it in Soviet cinemas in its first year.
- The songs are set to poems by Robert Burns, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Nikolai Zabolotsky.
