Reception
"White Sun of the Desert" became one of the most popular movies made during the Soviet era, and it has attained a cult status in Russia. In 1970 the film was the tenth most popular film of the year, with 34.5 million viewers. It helped popularize Eastern movies.
"White Sun of the Desert" did not receive any rewards during the Soviet era. It lost the 1970 USSR State Prize to By The Lake. It may have lost due to the slightly controversial tone of the film, which could be seen as implicitly poking fun at Soviet mythologizing of the Revolution and Civil War. But in 1998 it was awarded the state prize by president Boris Yeltsin, being recognized as culturally significant.
The film received limited attention in the West. It was shown at a Soviet film festival at the little Carnegie Theatre in 1973, meant to tie in with Brezhnev's visit to the United States. Other than that, it was not largely released. Roger Greenspun, the New York Times movie critic, referred to it as "escapist entertainment".
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Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)