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# Raizman’s 1984 film “Time of Desires” about the daily life of Muscovites in the late USSR
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/ustavshim-ot-ianvarskogo-marafona-starykh-filmov-rekomenduiu-posmotret-lentu-1984-g-o-stolichnoi-zhizni-v-pozdnem-sssr-vremia-zhelanii-s-veroi-alentovoi-i-anatoliem-papanovym/
- Published: 2020-01-26T14:18:52.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T18:57:42.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Cinema, Moscow, Observations, Mores

For those weary of the January marathon of old films, I recommend a 1984 picture about metropolitan life in the late USSR, "A Time of Desires" with Vera Alentova and Anatoly Papanov. Admirers of "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" may find this melodrama of some interest, at any rate: here too Alentova's heroine is a strong and solitary woman, but of quite another character, morals and values. She is determined to marry a man of standing, without fail, and hunts for him in the rest homes of architects and composers, where she finds a modest but very well-off ministry official, considerably older than herself, played by Papanov. On the whole, what holds one's attention in the film is not the drama but its portrait of the domestic life of late Soviet Muscovites: how to exchange a flat on Kutuzovsky for one on Malaya Bronnaya, where to procure a chandelier, how to cultivate advantageous acquaintances and with whose help to land a job. Not the strongest of films, and probably forgotten for that reason. But among the last works of Raizman, who was then already 81, it deserves attention.

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_2295@26-01-2020_17-18-52.jpg)

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_2296@26-01-2020_17-18-52.jpg)