Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears: Katya's Moscow, 1958–1978

Moscow, 1958. Three provincial girlfriends live in a workers' dormitory. When relatives leave for a long trip, Katerina is asked to house-sit their flat in this Stalin high-rise, and Lyudmila invites herself along. She talks Katerina into a dinner party, a ploy to meet successful men, and that evening Katerina meets Rudolf, a smooth-talking TV cameraman. The tower, one of seven built in 1948–1954, still rises over the square.

Visitor guidance: The flats are private homes; look at the tower from Kudrinskaya Square.

Katerina works in a factory while studying at night; twenty years later she is its newly appointed director. The factory scenes were shot in the shops of the Khimvolokno works in Klin, north-west of Moscow, which kept running during filming. The premiere was held in Klin too, at the factory club in Maidanovo, attended by director Vladimir Menshov and lead actress Vera Alentova.

Location precision: The film never names its factory; the shoot took place at the Khimvolokno works in Klin, and the pin marks that town.

Two scenes are set on Gogol Boulevard. In 1958 Katya Tikhomirova meets Rudolf Rachkov here, the TV cameraman who will refuse to marry her once she is pregnant. Twenty years later, Rudolf, now calling himself Rodion, wants to meet his daughter, and their meeting takes place at the same spot. The place gives the film its symmetry: two decades, one meeting point.

Location precision: The sources name the boulevard but not the exact bench or stretch; the pin marks the boulevard.

Visitor guidance: The boulevard is a public park strip; walk it end to end.

One scene is set in a flat in the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment high-rise. A character there mentions the poets Voznesensky, Rozhdestvensky and Yevtushenko, all of whom lived in the building. The pin marks the tower, not a specific flat.

Location precision: The film does not say which flat is used in which scene; the pin marks the tower itself.

The film ends on Katerina repeating her line, "I've been looking for you for such a long time", as Gosha answers "Eight days". The closing credits then show a panorama of lit evening windows, filmed in autumn 1978 at the round house at Dovzhenko Street 6, one of the first shoots there. The building has appeared in films since then, and it is still a home, so look from the street.