Figure 1.--"Kevade" is aonderful look at the life of children in Tsarist Estonia. Here Arno and Raja are lighting candles at Christmas.

Many of the scenes are comic with the boys getting into various kinds of trouble at the school, and one of the boys, Joosep Toots, is a prankster who creates all sorts of havoc such as cutting off the buttons on the shoes of another boy, Georg Kiir, and breaking into a storage room where wine is kept and getting amusingly drunk. The boys are in their middle teens. In the midst of all the comedy there is a puppy love affair between a village boy, Arno Tali, and one of the girls, Raja Teele, which seems to be half-Platonic, until Arno's rival arrives--Jann Imelik, a boy with a shock of luxuriant blonde hair who plays the kannel and temporarily seems to take her away from Arno. One of the servants at the school, Kristjan Lible, a bell-ringer at the local church and a drunk at one point, gets sacked on the false testimony of another boy, Tonisson, who loves to fight, is rather heavily built, and seems somewhat slower mentally than the brigher Arno and Toots. Lible is kind to the boys and at various point is the sad and wise philosopher of the film, which has its poignant as well as its hilarious moments.