This film makes one wonder what exactly the heroine worked so hard for. A young girl from a small town comes to Moscow and becomes pregnant. Her lover repudiates her, the lover's mother humiliates her, telling her that she is not a good fit for her big-city dandy son. Rather than leave Moscow and go back to her parents, or try to perform an abortion on herself, the heroine has the baby. She works hard at the factory, getting up at 5 AM every morning, passes grueling entrance exams into college, becomes an engineer -- all while raising her little girl as a single parent and an unwed mother. Bold subject matter for a Soviet movie made in the seventies.
Then -- a compromise: the heroine who, sixteen years after her ordeal, has a good life, a good home, and a prestigious managerial job, falls head over heals for a man who treats her like dirt.
"Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" was made almost at the same time as the equally celebrated "Workplace Romance" ("Sluzhebnyj Roman"), and they are, in a sense, competitors. Both movies are about single women in their mid- to late thirties who made a brilliant career but were never married. Both heroines are presented as strong-willed, independent individuals in managerial positions, whose lives are nevertheless missing something. But if "Sluzhebnyj Roman" says that life is incomplete without love, "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" says that life is incomplete without a man.
Women of the older generation are all in love with "Moscow"'s main male character -- the heroine's ultimate husband. I cannot fathom why -- the actor's cute, but his character is unnerving. One does not need to be a feminist to have a strong urge to throw this man down the stairs. He stifles every impulse of individuality in her; he presumes to know what she wants, what's proper for her and what's not; he patronizes her; he pushes her around. On the train, he begins their acquaintance by commenting: "You have the eyes of a woman who is not married." (What kind of eyes are those?) I cannot see why one would find any charm in such familiarity and cocky self-assurance from a stranger.
It's worth noting that the corresponding character in "Sluzhenyj Roman" -- an excessively mild-mannered, shy man -- learns to stand up to the bossy heroine, but does so without disrespecting her. The character in "Moscow", on the contrary, puts the heroine in her proper place -- which is to be quiet and follow orders.
I think that a Western critic would perceive the ending of "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" as ironic and sad. The heroine, a woman who spent her life making something of herself by overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles, is last shown fussing around her kitchen for the benefit of a man who was not with her on that long journey, who dares to raise his voice at her in her own home, while eating her food, and who acts as if his very physical presence at the table confers a rare privilege on a woman whose clock is ticking.
