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In December, 1954, "Sovietskaya Kultura" published a now famous article by Michael Romm, one of the Soviet Union's most prominent film producers. After discussing plans for the increase of production from sixty to one hundred and fifty films a year, he showed how bureaucracy was throttling creative effort and called for a "decisive reconstruction" of every branch of "our complex art-industry", a reconstruction which would return to the filmmakers the creative initiative they had lost. He argued that this could be achieved in a number of ways but particularly by the formation in each studio of independent secions. "Such a group must have the right to tackle all its creative and production questions independently." Romm's critical, constructive article is but one example of the rethinking which has taken place in Soviet studios during the last three years.
The Rumyantsev Case represents one of the early results of new policies - interesting cinematically, it also reflects in some degree "the loosening of the arts" process which "The Times" first saw at work in Samsonov's The Grasshtopper.
The story tells how a long-distance lorry-driver becomes unwittingly involved with carting stolen goods, is caught, arrested: only the faith of his friends and the efforts of a conscientious detective of the State save him from conviction.