Russkiy vopros

While the plot is rather simplistic and the dramaturgy feels executed in a broad-brush manner, there are quite a few good comedic effects (even though the laughing stuck in my throat as the subject is hardly a laughing matter, neither on the U. S./Truman nor on the SSSR/Stalin side) and there is lots of good camera work - though not the same league we are used to from top Soviet directors like Sergei Eisenstein or Andrei Tarkovsky.

What surprised me most is that this film was already turned in 1947, well before the Second Red Scare got fully under way in 1949-51, and even before the notorious HUAC Hollywood inquiry that started in October 1947. Then again, with the experience of the First Red Scare (1918-20) in mind and hearing President Truman's March 1947 "loyalty review" executive order (not to mention Stalin's purges in the 1930ies), it probably wasn't that hard to anticipate what might be coming. Still, getting the film out within months of this stuff becoming official U. S. government policy, and about two years before the hysteria in the U. S. got out widely of hand, feels eerily timely to me, almost visionary even from today's retrospect perspective.

All the same, only 4/10 because while remarkable in some historical respects, it is not nuanced enough to be really captivating or thought-inspiring, (thankfully) not funny enough to be suitable as casual entertainment, and while decent cinematographic work, not a significant aesthetic innovation either.