The White Sun of The Desert, a Soviet film made in 1970 by Vladimir Motyl.
This film went on to become one of the most popular films in the Soviet Union at the time, and over the years has become a part of popular culture and remains so even today, many years after the end of the Soviet Union.
My experience with Soviet films of this period was entirely limited to the work of a certain Andrei Tarkovsky, one of my favourite directors yet also a very intellectual one whose films are far from being populist.
However I had explored Silent Soviet Cinema to some extent but with the exception of the Battleship Potemkin, I had come away rather disappointed.
My hopes were high for this film though, after all it was voted the best Russian film in 1995 and is even watched ceremoniously by all Russian astronauts before they set out on their spacial missions. It's a classic, there are no other words to put it really. As much as The Godfather is an American Classic, The White Sun Of The Desert is a Russian one. But the similarities between the two films end there...
