Starling and Lyre

Starling and Lyre is the last feature directed by the legendary Soviet director Aleksandrov, starring Ljubov Orlova who had
been the star of his popular musical comedies in the 1930s. This is a
strange, glossy spy romance in which Orlova (already in her seventies!)
and Pyotr Velyaminov play two lovers who have been working undercover in
Germany since World War II, and who now have to investigate the German
industrial machine as it potentially conspires against the Soviet Union.

The film, presenting Soviet Russia as a benevolent peace-loving
superpower pitted against ‘bad Germans and even worse Americans plotting
to replay the Second World War against the Russians’ was pulled from
theatres a few days after its release and remained nearly invisible for
decades because the plot, inadvertently, resembled the Guillaume Affair:
in 1974, a personal assistant to German chancellor Brandt was unmasked
as a Stasi spy.

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