discoveries . the other side of the curtain . the train pulled into the platform at Leningrad at 22.31 . the autumn leaves on the Finnish landscape on the journey from Helsinki had been a memorable sight . now , here in the dark of a Russian night , the cold nip of approaching winter smacked the face . on the platform , waiting for me , were three men . I immediately recognised the tough face with the friendly smile . it was Vladimir Vengherov , one of the Lenfilm directors , whose acquaintance I had first made as we splashed together in the Adriatic during the Venice festival a few months previously . with him was a slight , fair-haired man ( looking , I thought , typically north country ) . he was introduced to me as Alexei Gorin , a scriptwriter for scientific films , the local representative of the Soviet film-makers &apos; association - my hosts together with the editorial board of cinema arts magazine - and a man with a surprising knowledge of England as a result of a short visit during an international congress of technical and scientific film-makers in London a couple of years ago . the third was a slender , dark haired youngster in an American-cut pin stripe suit . he introduced himself as Vadim , Vadim Sazonov , languages student at the Moscow University , who was to be my interpreter during the next two weeks . we drove in a comfortable , American-style taxi to the Europe hotel and there , in an office-cum-bedroom ( nothing could have been more suitably arranged for my purpose ) we sat far into the early hours discussing what I wanted to see and who I wanted to meet in Leningrad . morning cinemas . I said I wanted to see many Soviet films under typical cinema conditions . and I was a little shaken to be told I could start next morning ( or rather , that morning ) at nine , when the cinemas opened for the benefit of workers on night shift . so that morning , Vadim , Gorin and myself set out on foot to discover a typical Soviet cinema . I would have found it difficult to find any cinema . all of them looked from the outside like a Manchester methodist church ; but on closer inspection one could see a small poster in a solo display frame announcing the programme details and the times of performance . and a few cinemas added to the display with one or two stills ; but this was an exception . the first cinema was typically Soviet &amp;hellip; but the programme was great expectations ( a back-handed compliment to British cinema because during our trek we found three other theatres showing the same great British picture . I could n&apos;t help thinking it was not all that great . ) by the time we had found the cinema showing a new Soviet film , man &apos;s blood is thicker than water , the programme had already begun ; and in a nearby cinema the programme would not start until eleven . there was one alternative . sightseeing . we walked down the main shopping street ( not unlike a south London high street on a Monday morning ) , and plunged into a metro station which took my breath away with its chandeliered opulence ; like some grand palace in pre-revolution France it was the last thing one would expect to find in post-revolution Russia . the platform was clean enough for a picnic . Gorin said such luxury had a beneficial effect on the working man on his way to , and from , the factory . if a Billingsgate porter found this at Monument , he &apos;d probably get on his knees and pray ! the sun burst through the blue-grey clouds above the river and splashed on the golden spire of the Peter-Paul fortress , the most ancient symbol of this most ancient of Russian cities . for a moment it was a reminder of former glories of St Petersburg . then past a naval training school , using the very ship from which a gun was fired to signal the start of the revolution , past the committee headquarters seen in so many Eisenstein and other classics ( Potemkin , strike , October ) and then into a taxi for the institute of arts . at the institute I was received by the secretary , Nina Volman and by the head of the film branch , Nicholas Yemov . with them were a number of students and a distinguished critic , Dr Dobin , who is shortly to publish a book on the poetry and prose of cinema . promote study . Mr Yemov explained that the institute has only been functioning for two years . its aims are to promote the serious study of cinema in and around the Leningrad area and it does not duplicate the work of the larger institute and archives in Moscow . at present the institute is completing a book dealing with the work of the younger school of Soviet directors . such men as Kozintsev , who made the wonderful version of Don Quixote and who is now planning to film Hamlet in colour and wide screen at the Lenfilm studios early in 1961 . I was interested to learn what British films have most impressed the members of the institute . they are familiar with Richard 3 , Oliver Twist , the horse &apos;s mouth , woman in a dressing gown , Geordie , Genevieve , room at the top &amp;hellip; and , of course , great expectations . we debated the advantages and disadvantages of filming famous classics and works originally intended for the theatre . the Russians , I found , have an obsession for this , even though they have found that when they film a novel it reduces rather than promotes the sale of the book , which , I explained , is opposite to our experiences in the west . and they seemed to accept my point that it is more important for the cinema that artists should concentrate on original work than transpositions , no matter how well they are engineered . I was anxious to find out what the Russians themselves regard as the most significant trends in Soviet film-making of recent years . Dr Dobin summarised their views like this : we agree with you when you say that films like ballad of a soldier , destiny of a man and Don Quixote have been important new styles in Soviet film-making . we are living now through an interesting period in the history of our cinema . the whole pattern of film-making is being changed . you see , the men who made the classics of Soviet cinema are no longer living - Eisenstein , Pudovkin , Dovzhenko . their tradition is carried on by directors like Kozintsev , Romm and Heifetz . but it is the young men who are profoundly changing all our old ideas . the pattern began to emerge when Chukhrai made the forty first , and it was consolidated in his more recent film , ballad of a soldier . although he has made only two films , he almost shows himself more talented than the old gang . it is a very significant fact . Sergei Bondarchuk , although he is not a young man is young among the ranks of directors , and his first film , destiny of a man , was recognised as an important contribution to cinema in every country where it was shown . another film of significance has been Serezha , made by Danelya and Talankin ( which won a major award at the Karlovy Vary festival ) . these films usher a new trend . our film producers are creating a new style that appeals to their audience without having to resort to the ingredients of western box-office , such as strip-tease . they are searching for something good in the soul of Soviet man . the new film-makers portray what they see without trying to improve people or embellish reality . this is important to realise . the main concern of these film-makers is to show the truth of life , even if it means showing the darker sides of life . some time ago - in the &apos;forties and &apos;fifties - there was a period of Soviet film-making when the films were like posters , divorced from people and from reality . falls among thieves . western audiences may find of particular interest a film by Heifetz , the case of Roumantsyev . it is the story of an honest young man who , in all innocence falls among thieves . he is arrested by the police and prosecuted for his part in crimes that he did not commit . all the circumstantial evidence is against him . the prosecutor is not concerned with him as an individual and is himself quite convinced of his guilt . but in the end a friend is able to prove the man &apos;s innocence to the satisfaction of the court officials . many of our films now focus attention on the problems of individuals . ballad of a soldier was a simple story of a pure young boy and a pretty girl falling in love . it was something with which audiences liked to identify themselves . another film about soldiers was called simply , soldiers . it is the work of Ivanov and , instead of concentrating on the battle , the political consequences , it is a study of the every day life , the detail of how a soldier lives ; and the duty , the responsibility , forms the background . so you see , our young directors are coming closer and closer to the realities of life . the members of the institute then took me to their small projection theatre to see a musical film made in Leningrad in 1941 by Alexander Ivanovski , Anton Ivanovich is angry , which stars a distinguished Soviet actor ( who lives in the city ) , Pavel Kadochnikov . it proved to be a Hollywood-style story , but instead of pop music the conflict between an old professor who doted over his opera-singing daughter and a young impressario was based on a natural conflict between the highbrows and the lowbrows in classical music . characterisation was ingenious enough , but I could n&apos;t help feeling the director was ill served by his scenarist . back at the Europe hotel we dined on caviar and baked sturgeon ( and if you think the Russians wallow in luxury you &apos;re wrong , it &apos;s as common in Leningrad as fish and chips ) . and during our conversation I began to realise that Vadim had a rather lop-sided view of British history . I realised some of the snags inherent in communication with the east during an interval at the concert that evening by the Leningrad symphony ( Haydn , Barber and Shostakovitch performed as well as you would hear anywhere in the world , perhaps better ) . I asked Vadim if he regretted the fact that he was not allowed to travel to countries in the west when and as he wanted to do so : and he reminded me of Nina , the little Russian visitor to London who found herself at Bow Street . no , he said , it is not that we are not allowed to visit the west , it is that we are protected from this kind of thing being done to us . the next day , on time , an Intourist car left us at a building reminiscent of the Albert Hall . this was the Velika cinema . we were to see a children &apos;s matinee of the green coach , a production of the Odessa studios , directed by Gennardy Gabay . there were hundreds of children , mostly boys in their grey military-style school hats , clambering to buy ice cream beneath a white statue of a large man with a dove in his left hand and a slogan behind : the world wants peace . as we waited for the film to begin a stout lady with a jovial face , who I understood to be the manageress , said the building was no longer to be a cinema but would shortly become a theatre . I asked if this was because television was causing fewer people to go to the cinema and she replied no , it was because in Leningrad they had already fulfilled their cinema attendance target so there was no need for the building any longer to function as a cinema . I wanted to ask for a fuller explanation of this cryptic statement , but we were suddenly plunged into darkness and the film began . boy Sherlock . it was an adventure yarn about the revolution , with red Russians fighting white Russians , and gangs of criminals ( also Russians ) in between . a small boy plays Sherlock Holmes . the gangs of horse-stealers and illicit vodka distillers are brought to justice and the red Russians make life better for everyone . 