Cherry Town (1963)

The title of the film (literally "Cherry Town") refers to new towns or neighborhoods based on middle-class urban development, where every block of houses looks exactly the same as the next. In the Soviet Union of the late 1950s this was thought to be equivalent to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. This musical involves the tribulations of four couples whose lives humorously intersect. It opens with Sergei, a driver, meeting up with his good friend Boris. After lamenting being alone, Boris falls head over heals for a museum guide, Lida. She resists his advances but that doesn't stop Boris. She leads him to her friends, Masha and Sasha, who are planning to get married and are elated to have recently received permission to move into an apartment in the Moscow Cheryomushki. On her way home (with Boris constantly tagging along), Lida discovers along with her father that the roof of their apartment has collapsed and is now uninhabitable. After some amazingly quick work, they receive permission to move into the same Cheryomushki. Working as a steam shovel engineer at this Cheryomushki is Lyusya, who is Sergei's girlfriend. She also has just obtained an apartment there and is waiting to hear the question that Sergei is too shy to ask. Sergei takes Boris, Lida, and her father to the Cheryomushki, ignoring the job for which he was hired, being a taxi to Vava, a Fellini-esque no-nonsense but playful buxom woman and her husband, Drebednev. Drebednev is the corrupt real estate manager who gives (or more often doesn't give) permission for people to take an apartment in the Cheryomushki. Additionally, Vava is a friend of Boris. To make Vava happier, Boris convinces Drebednev to expand their 2-bedroom apartment into a 4-room apartment. But when he breaks down the walls, he has to evict the tenants in the next apartment, Lida and her father. They are heartbroken and have to now worry about going through the long process of receiving another apartment. Meanwhile, as Masha and Sasha move in, they discover that none of their neighbors have keys, so they all spend an evening of singing and dancing in Masha's and Sasha's apartment. Realizing Lida's plight, Boris suggests to Vava that two 2-bedroom apartments are better than one 4-bedroom apartment. Drebednev returns the aparment to Lida and her father, is unmasked as a bureaucrat, and Vava chooses to get a divorce. Finally, through the help of a bench, Sergei gets the courage to ask Lyusya to marry him. In the end of the film, Lida still rejects Boris, who is one of the crewmen detonating Drebednev's old office. He picks the petals of a daisy ("she loves me, she loves me not") when the detonation goes off, thrusting him up several floors on to Lida's terrace, and presumably to a happy end for all.