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Compared to the somberly serious Russian films being released in the U.S. after WW II, the lighthearted The Train Goes East must have seemed like a breath of fresh air. The story begins on VJ day in August of 1945. Celebrating the victory, navy captain Lavrentyev (Leonid Gallis) sets his sights on romance, with pretty agricultural expert Sokolova (Lydia Dranovskaya) his willing target. Missing their train home, the captain and Sokolova are forced to find any available means of transportation, leading to a series of gently amusing situations. Along the way, the budding romance is threatened by the sort of mutual misunderstandings one usually finds in Hollywood screwball comedies. Train Goes East was the latest in a series of frothy concoctions by popular Russian filmmaker Yuri Raizman, who ironically had begun his career turning out such grimly realistic efforts as Forced Labor (1928) and The Earth Thirsts (1930).