the best thing that has happened to the cinema since René Clair made The Italian Straw Hat. Alexandrov, who has been awarded a Soviet Order for his direction, has produced, just as Clair did then, out of the smallest resources and apparently with poor-quality film, a picture of almost ecstatic happiness. ... I have no wish to criticise this film, but simply to rejoice in its wildness, its grotesqueness, its light, taking tunes, a sense of good living that owes nothing to champagne or women's clothes." Film critic Jean Ross — writing as Peter Porcupine in her 1 October 1935 review for The Daily Worker — effusively praised the film: "The workers in the Soviet Union have introduced to the world an entirely new sort of humour... behind the comedy of Jazz Comedy is no dismal shadow of tragedy, but the electrifying strength and vitality and freedom of a victorious working class." Influence The film was enormously successful in the Soviet Union. It had a small impact much later in Australia after it was shown in 1964 at the Australia Cinema in Melbourne and the name "The Jolly Fellows" was used for over a decade thereafter by a small jazz band after the original members, David Meadows, Keith Morgan and Pete Bannister, high school friends and then all aged 19, had seen and enjoyed the film. Cast Lyubov Orlova Leonid Utyosov Mariya Strelkova Yelena Tyapkina Fyodor Kurikhin Arnold Arnold Valentin Parnakh References External links http://www.close-up.ru/catalog/detail.php?FID=5325 1934 films Mosfilm films 1930s Russian-language films 1934 musical comedy films 1930s romantic musical films Films set in Moscow Films set in the Soviet Union Films shot in Georgia (country) Films shot in Moscow Soviet black-and-white films Soviet musical comedy films Russian musical comedy films Films directed by Grigori Aleksandrov Films scored by Isaak Dunayevsky