Cinema
The Heart Sings
Սիրտն է երգում
Grigor Melik-Avagyan · 1956
Synopsis
Karen Gharibyan, a blind singer with a rare voice, lives far from his country, among overseas Armenians. He chooses to return to Armenia, where he hopes to find a stage, an audience and a place of his own; around him revolve Sona, Gharib and a whole little society with names from elsewhere, José Marie, Gliko or Barbara.
Context
The film was written by its director with Maro Yerzinkyan, based on the life of its star, the tenor Arthur Aydinyan: born in Salonika, a resistance fighter under the German occupation, he had almost lost his sight in a camp before his family settled in Soviet Armenia in 1947. The music is by Alexandre Haroutiounian and Konstantin Orbelian, to words by Harold Reguistan, and the sets by Valentin Podpomogov. It was released in Moscow on 4 April 1957, then shown in Iran, in New York in 1958 and in Tokyo in 1964.
Who it is for
In Armenian, with subtitles. A sung melodrama of the fifties, to be taken with the conventions of the genre and the period.
Prizes and reception
Its songs became hits throughout the Soviet Union and earned the composers Khachaturian's praise.