2025 № 2 (53)

UDC 78; 791

LBC 85.317; 85.374.3(2)

DOI: 10.51678/2226-0072-2025-2-360-393

For cit.: Zhurkova D.A. Religious Symbolism, Rock Dramaturgy and the Buzz of the Era in the Soundtrack of the Film The Lovers’ Romance. Hudozhestvennaya kul’tura [Art & Culture Studies], 2025, no. 2, pp. 360–393. https://doi.org/10.51678/2226-0072-2025-2-360-393. (In Russian)

Zhurkova Daria A.

PhD (in Culture Studies), Senior Researcher, Mass Media Arts Department, State Institute for Art Studies, 5 Kozitsky Lane, Moscow, 125375, Russia

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0752-9786

ResearcherID: ABG-3983-2020

jdacha@mail.ru

Religious Symbolism, Rock Dramaturgy and the Buzz of the Era in the Soundtrack of the Film The Lovers’ Romance

Abstract. The article is devoted to the soundtrack of the film The Lovers’ Romance (1974) by Andrei Konchalovsky. It studies the genre and stylistic genesis of the songs and compositions written by Alexander Gradsky, reveals the role of music in the plot of the film, and traces the signs of a rock opera in its musical and dramaturgical solution. Based on the extensive discussion of the film in the mid-1970s, the author examines the reasons for the difficult acceptance of its musical and dramaturgical features by both ordinary viewers and the professional community. It is hypothesised that most viewers, having succumbed to the supposed socialist realism of the plot, were unable to decode the true content of many of the songs in which religious, dissident and escapist motifs appear. The real subject of the film is the drama of disappointment of an ‘ordinary’ Soviet man in the ideals of collective existence, which is also manifested in the soundtrack. In particular, in the contrast between Gradsky’s explosive, dramatic, modern music and the Soviet retro-pop of the 1930s and 1960s which nobody listens to despite it being on TV and radio. In many ways, The Lovers’ Romance anticipated and foreshadowed the leitmotifs of perestroika films about rock musicians, but its sophisticated play with socialist realism did not let it enter the pantheon of the Soviet ‘rock cinema’.

Keywords: film music, rock opera, Soviet cinema, The Lovers’ Romance, Andrei Konchalovsky, Alexander Gradsky

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Received 10.01.2025

Accepted 29.03.2025