AbstractThe article traces the changing status of Vladimir Men'shov's Oscar-winning film, Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (1979). This film, lauded by Hollywood for its ‘apolitical’ celebration of three women in Brezhnev's Russia, has nonetheless gone through various, more complex interpretations by various audiences, both at home and abroad. A movie known in the West as a Soviet success on the red carpet, this film has today inspired a new, very different generation of Russian television heroines in serialized dramas. What appears to us a Cinderella story is now seen at home as the foundation for sadder, ‘consolatory’ tales. Ironically, the ability to forge a career and find a husband has become so difficult in modern Moscow that Men'shov's film is today endlessly, ironically referenced as a tale that should come true — but. never does.