Word: akakievich
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Overcoat. In Nikolai Gogol's short story, as in this brief and virtually flawless film from Russia, Akaky Akakievich is a hunched, squinty-eyed penpusher, ridiculed at his office, who all winter long must suffer the cold winds of St. Petersburg whipping through his gauze thin overcoat. Compelled to buy a new one at painful cost, he talks to it, sleeps with it, defends it against a threatening moth. Next day, miraculously, Akaky Akakievich and his overcoat create a sen sation at work. His former tormentors are now backslapping friends; he is even invited to a champagne party...
Roland Bykov, best known in Russia as a stage director, is perfectly cast as Akakievich, and Aleksei Batalov, who was an actor in such films as Nine Days of One Year and The Cranes Are Flying, directs the film as a memorable character portrait, faithful in spirit and exquisite in detail. Looking like a wistful hand-carved troll, Bykov is gently hilarious when he first ventures out to show off his coat, cautiously dodging snowflakes, and ineffably tragic later as he stumbles through the white night mourning his loss at every window. Everything is right with The Overcoat, except that...
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