The Steamroller and the Violin (1961)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Steamroller and the Violin (1961) – A Tarkovsky

This was Tarkovsky’s student thesis film, clocking in at about 45 minutes and in the rather glorious color that films shined with at the time.  A small boy learning the violin is teased by other bigger kids but finds a protector in a local worker who is operating a steamroller on a nearby building site.  Their unlikely friendship plays out in a series of anecdotes culminating with an agreed upon plan to go to the movies – which the boy’s mother subsequently prohibits. Somehow I kept expecting the violin to be smashed flat by the steamroller, but it didn’t happen.  That wouldn’t be Tarkovsky’s way, I’m sure, and instead he seems to be focusing on the relationship between workers and artists in the communist regime.  Can’t they be friends? Stalin rode roughshod over the arts bending them to his will but again Tarkovsky looks beyond that grudge to think more carefully about the role of art in a society and its contributions. The film contains dazzling poetic shots that must have led everyone to believe that this student would one day become a master filmmaker – and he did (Andrei Rublev, Solaris, The Mirror, Stalker, etc.).