This film marks an undoubtable break with a tradition which at one time was considered an integral part of Georgian cinema. A tradition where the Caucasian landscape, embracing in its fold romantic mountain slopes, deep gorges and snow-capped peaks, seemed to speak of life and its beginnings with great solemnity. A tradition from where the typical Georgian character emerges—a character who is simultaneously frank, generous, hospitable and noble to a degree of grotesque punctiliousness. Folk songs of this region from time immemorial have praised the plough that feeds man, the sword that protects him, as also the vine which provides rejuvenating gaiety. Perhaps nowhere in the world is there such a meticulously worked out culture of proposing toasts at the table. A person getting up with a horn in his hand to propose a toast, can open-heartedly flatter you or covertly catch you out. He can also reveal to you some trait of yours which you were not aware of. The feast turns into a model of life and vice versa; life is at times seen as an extension of the feast, an endless, lyrically elevated mutual glorification of the animate and the inanimate. Towards the end of the 1960s a sort of single formula of the so-called 'authentic Georgian cinema' had taken shape. It presupposed a smooth shift from the day-to-day details of life to the highest abstractions of life's eternal principles (the birth of a new life, mutual love, a dignified and uncomplaining death when one's time is up—all this encompassing human beings, animals and plants). It also meant a constant feeling of elation at life, gratitude towards it and man's merger with nature. For some time this artistic trend seemed both original and extremely attractive. Later it began to be regarded as a formula, a rule and hence degenerated into a scholastic exercise in stylistics. The romantic flourishes tended to gloss over the real traits and individuality of the hero. The lyrical and exalted style of narration had no place for either the ordinary or the mundane. The eternal festival did not tally with the gradual awareness of conflicts arising from the harsh times, social changes, conditions and machinery. The most prominent Georgian artists began to more and more resemble those who, at the time of festivities, cannot drive away sad and tense thoughts. Given the opportunity they would quietly slip away from the banquet table .... We will not argue as to who took the first step. One thing is certain: the most determined of them all was Otar loseliani, a man of enormous talent and originality. In his films Fallen Leaves and especially in There Lived a Song-Thrush he depicts what one may call the back-stage of the festival of life, or to be more exact, the bitter price that a conscientious person has to pay for having forced himself into an artificial equation with everyone around him. This includes those who shirk work and live like parasites building their personal happiness at public expense. In Fallen Leaves a puny young intellectual violates the generally accepted code of mutual agreement—a type of indifference pact of people resigned to evil and doomed to compromise. The film There Lived a Sons Thrush is about a young drummer from a symphony orchestra. He is forever hurrying Journal of Arts & Ideas 41