Старожил (1962)

Wonderful gem about the adventures of Andreiy Krutikov, the first citizen to be born in a small repopulated town which, at the time of starting this film that will be narrated in retrospect, already has a main street named after him. Only subtly does the plot play with the irony that the 12-year-old boy is the oldest in the town because the others were not born there and because the boys at his school are younger in age. Krutikov is a full-time scoundrel of small stature, following the elephants he will be late for school many times and other times he will run into a circus bear near the stable; but of course his school grades will be bad and for that the girl Sinitsyn, a classmate, will scold him, but she will help him - mainly in arithmetic Tanya, his other classmate... - welcome be the order of communism thanks to the support of the comrades of the community; In any case, Krutikov will learn to calculate how much oats a horse eats, not thanks to Anna Vasilievna's classes but by asking the sharecropper about the Kalandina filly: the answer is, she eats 5 kilos of oats three times a day. Tireless, bullying almost everyone, his world changes with the arrival of the new boy in class, Borya. After throwing his school supplies into a puddle and insulting Borya, he follows him after school and discovers that the new kid in town works at the circus. That changes everything. seeing the enemy fail in their trials and, even so, perform pirouettes with the horse in motion without complaining and repeating. First Borya will help him with math problems, then they will try a failed circus performance at Andreiy's house, at least before his mother arrives it was fun as jugglers with china plates and other jokes. The girls at school obviously sensed that the new boy was receiving a bad influence from the little thug Krutikov, but anyway they stayed together until the circus had to leave and at their farewell, Borka gave him his algebra book, repeating the eternal mantra: imple to the complex friend. The omniscient narrator says that one day Yuri Gagarin's street crossed Krutikov's street but that's how things are, even though he hasn't done anything heroic, much less reached the Moon or space like Yuri.