60 years of the Splendid Days

On August 12, 1960, the debut full-length feature film by young filmmakers Georgiy Daneliya and Igor Talankin "A Summer to Remember (Splendid Days)", based on the story by Vera Panova, was released on the screens of Soviet cinemas.

The film "A Summer to Remember (Splendid Days)" quickly became very popular with Soviet film audiences. During the first year of the demonstration, it was watched by more than 23 million moviegoers, and according to the survey of the magazine "Soviet Screen" in 1961, it was recognized as the best film of the Soviet film distribution.

But not only Soviet moviegoers liked the film by Georgiy Danelia and Igor Talankin. In the same 1960, the film became the winner of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. However, someone could explain this by the influence of the Soviet leadership on the jury of the festival, since it was held in the country of the socialist camp - Czechoslovakia.

But a year later, the film received a Special Mention at the International Film Festival in Greek Thessaloniki. Moreover, the second feature film awarded this mention (the highest award for foreign films at this festival) was the film "L'Avventura (The Adventure)" by the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni. There was nothing to do with the influence of the USSR.

But even more about the objective merits of "A Summer to Remember (Splendid Days)" is evidenced by the fact that in 1961 the US National Board of Review included this film among the 5 best foreign films of 1960. And in this list the film "A Summer to Remember (Splendid Days)" was acompanied with such universally recognized world film masterpieces as, for example, "La dolce vita" by Federico Fellini or "Two Women" by Vittorio De Sica.

The film "L'Avventura (The Adventure)" was highly appreciated not only from viewers of the early 60s of the last century, but also from modern moviegoers. 75% of users of IMDB and Kinopoisk gave this film ratings from 8 to 10. And 34% - generally rated the film with the highest score - "ten".

With that said, "A Summer to Remember (Splendid Days)" was rated 8.524 by FilmGourmand, placing the film at # 313 in the Golden Thousand.