There are films you watch again and again, and each time they take on a new meaning or open up a new detail. ‘The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!’, the 1975 Soviet film directed by Eldar Ryazanov, has always been more than a New Year comedy to me for multiple reasons. There’s the main female character, her name, address and occupation, her manner and style, not to mention the choice she makes. There’s magical music by Mikael Tariverdiev. There are poems and songs they are sung to, particularly Со мною вот что происходит (That’s what is happening to me) by Evgeny Evtushenko and Никого не будет в доме (There’ll be no one in the house) by Boris Pasternak. There are dialogues you can quote from all year round.
There is a line, however, that always used to puzzle me. Criticising the jellied fish, the protagonist Zhenya says ‘it’s strychnine’, which does not seem to be a conventional comparison. Much to my surprise, during the Federico Fellini retrospective last year I heard it mentioned in his characterful and nostalgic Amarcord. Food features prominently in Fellini’s films, and the 1973 masterpiece is not an exception. In the colourful scene where the family gathers at the table the wife threatens to put strychnine into the soup. Whether Zhenya’s association is an intentional reference or pure coincidence I haven’t found out, but then I saw further connections between some of the scenes from Fellini’s 1953 I Vitelloni and Ryazanov’s 1956 Carnival Night, another heart-warming Soviet New Year classic.
22/12/2021
/Postcard given to me for New Year 2020 by a dear colleague/