Magicians

Magicians (1982) — watch online on iFILM, the beloved Soviet New Year TV film directed by Konstantin Bromberg, loosely adapted from the Strugatsky brothers' novel Monday Begins on Saturday. Alexander Abdulov, Alexandra Yakovleva, Valentin Gaft, Yekaterina Vasilieva, and Semyon Farada lead the cast.

Ivan Pukhov, an ordinary engineer from Moscow, arrives in a provincial town to visit his fiancée Alyona — who works at NUINU, a research institute that develops magic wands in complete earnestness, with a big demonstration scheduled for New Year's Eve. Before Ivan can find her, the scheming Apollon Sataneyev has already turned the institute's powerful director against her. A forgetting spell is cast. Alyona no longer knows who Ivan is. He has until midnight.

Bromberg played it completely straight — the institute's bureaucratic rivalries and departmental jealousies feel real even when the magic doesn't. Gaft's villain is having far too good a time to be truly sinister, which is what makes him funny. A holiday film that holds up because it trusts its characters more than its effects. Stream Magicians (1982) online on iFILM.