MLR, I02.1, 2007 303 even though it means lettinghis own home burn. Fortunately, Happiness transcends thisbasic myth of socialist realism.Modern viewers appreciate the film for its richly imagined satire of pre-revolutionary Russia, populated by richmerchants, greedy priests, sexy nuns, and grotesque soldiers, and itsmany inspired comic moments. While Medvedkin's other filmsof the I930S show occasional sparks of comic ge nius, The Miracle Worker [Chudesnitsa] (I936) was a box officedisappointment and New Moscow [Novaia Moskva] (I938) was a complete disaster. Two months after it was approved fordistribution, for reasons which remain obscure to this day, the film was suddenly and inexplicably banned. Although he continued to direct filmsuntil his death in I989, after thedisaster ofNew Moscow Medvedkin would spend thenext fifty years of his life in a kind of cinema purgatory, filming and directing newsreels during thewar and thenpropaganda documentaries in thepost-war period. While Widdis iscertainly right todecry this colossal waste of talent, her argument that,contrary to all appearances and tohis own repeated professions of loyalty to the Soviet system,Medvedkin was actually satirizing the central political events of his lifetime (e.g. collectivization, the reconstruction of Moscow, and Khrushchev's Virgin Lands programme) ultimately fails toconvince. After the minor miracle ofHappiness, his films are consistently undone by idealized and unreal characters, inert ideology, and a totally falsified representation of Soviet reality.The ironyofMedvedkin's life and career is that,despite never questioning theuncompromising and Romantic Bol shevik faithof his youth, this loyal servant of theRevolution was fordecades harassed and obstructed by obtuse censors and critics.His tragedy is that a film-makerwho showed a genius for capturing something close to unvarnished reality in his early documentary filmsended as the creator of crude and propagandistic political docu mentaries inwhich he defended thepeaceful and democratic policies of theBrezhnev regime against 'thedestruction ofmoral norms and themoral degradation of contem porary capitalist society' (p. I20). Unfortunately,Widdis's enthusiasm for Medvedkin the political satirist blinds her to this less attractive aspect of his work. And this is a shame because the full story ofMedvedkin's career would make an even more in triguingbook than the somewhat truncated version that Widdis presents. THE COLLEGE OFWILLIAM ANDMARY,WILLIAMSBURG ANTHONY ANEMONE DmitriShostakovich: A Lifein Film.ByJOHN RILEY.(KINOfilesFilmmakers' Com panions)Londonand NewYork: Tauris. 2005. ix+ 150pp. C14.99. ISBN 978 I-85043-484-9. This is the firstever English-language study of Shostakovich's filmmusic, and as such is automatically indispensable. John Riley is absolutely right to say that this part of Shostakovich's musical legacy has been overlooked, and he is also right to insist that the filmscores are an essential part of that legacy.He is also one of the few people in theUK, at least,who currently has access to all the films, most ofwhich are not commercially available; few scholars can boast such an advantage. Riley is a filmspecialist, not amusicologist or a historian, and as such he isbetter placed than anyone to shed light on this temptingly uncharted territory. But the real test of this pioneering study iswhether it really does shed lighton Shostakovich's filmoutput by giving scholars usable information.And in this respectRiley's success is less clear. What do we need toknow?Well, tobegin with, it would be nice toknow how toob tain asmuch of thisprecious material as possible. Derek Hulme' s Dmitri Shostakovich: A Catalogue, Bibliography and Discography (Lanham, ML: Scarecrow Press, 2002) is, asRiley generously acknowledges, an indispensable resource, giving us near-complete listingsof filmrecordings on video, DVD, LP, and CD. It isunderstandable thatRiley 304 Reviews would not want merely to reproduce this information. But most readers of Riley's book will not have Hulme's book to hand. And so it isprofoundly frustratingnot to find at least video and DVD listings in the filmography; Riley isbetter placed than anyone to give comprehensive information about their availability, and yet tells us next tonothing about it. So ifwe accept thatwe are not likely to seemost of these films in the foreseeable future, what elsewould we like toknow? First and foremost,what musicologists, Slav ists,and all readers not well versed in themechanics of filmproduction would really like toknow more about is the...