Personal Development Blog

Jolly Fellows

This movie was created in 1934! Yet in our childhood we saw it many many times. Our TV had only three programs, and we did not have much choise. This optimistic song of a shepherd about influence of a jolly song, the tune that stays in one’s heart, you know. I have not found any extracts of this movie on YouTube, so maybe I will upload it some time later. Here is a concise plot of this movie from Wikipedia:

Yelena (Mariya Strelkova), a wanna-be singer who is unable to hold the tune, mistakes shepherd Kostya Potekhin (Leonid Utyosov) for a famous conductor of a jazz orchestra and invites him to an elegant party. He plays his pan flute, which attracts the herd of animals from his kolkhoz to the dining tables. Yelena’s servant Anyuta (Lyubov Orlova) falls for Kostya. Anyuta turns out to be an excellent singer.

Twelve Chairs

There were two main screen versions of this classic novel by Ilf and Petrov, one with Gomiashvili and Philippov, and another one with Mironov and Papanov. I give my vote for Gomiashvili, even though Mironov-Papanov duet proved to be successful in other comedies… but not in this one. Gomiashvili in a role of the most famous schemer Ostap Bender is incomparable. The plot is well known. I will quote Wikipedia:

In the novel, a con man Ostap Bender meets dispossessed nobleman Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobianinov. Vorobianinov has just discovered, during the deathbed confession of his mother-in-law, that a set of jewels had been hidden from the Bolsheviks in one of the twelve chairs from the family’s dining room set.

Those chairs, along with all other personal property, had been expropriated by the government after the Russian Revolution. Bender forces Kisa (Vorobianinov’s funny childhood nickname preferred by Bender) to partner with him, which ultimately helps Kisa who lacks Bender’s charm and street-smarts. Kisa and Bender set off together to locate the chairs and recover the fortune, but are stymied by a series of false leads and other trying yet humorous events.

As I like to quote actual extracts from the movies from Youtube, I will do it here, too. Here is a collection of famous quotes. I can’t translate all the text here, but the beginning phrase is The Ice Has Begun to Break So I Will Be In Command of the Parade!

Kidnapping, Caucasian Style

Oh, Kunakis, Comrade Saakhov, Bambarbiya-Kergudu, famous characters, phrases and music. Definitely a classic movie.

“There are only two outcomes are possible: either I will lead her to civilian registry office to marry her, or she will lead me to public prosecutor to put me in jail!”

“Speak slower… I am writing it down!”

“She is so nice… sportswoman… Young Communist Leaguer… a cutie… And I ask only twenty-five rams for her… ”

“You perception of the world is limited. You look to the world from the window of my personal car.”

A kind, yet naïve, student named Shurik (Demyanenko) goes to a place in the Caucasus to learn the ancient customs of the locals. He falls in love with a girl called Nina (Varley), her uncle (Mkrtchyan) sells her as a bride without her knowledge and arranges to have her kidnapped by the eccentric trio: Coward, Fool and Experienced. After a failed attempt, the uncle decides to trick Shurik into helping with the kidnapping - telling him that it is a traditional custom and that it was Nina’s own wish. Shurik goes through with the kidnapping, and does not figure out what has really happened at first, but with the help of a friend he manages to rescue Nina from her captors.

 I already quote this movie here in my Russian Jokes Blog.

Here is a popular song in this movie “If I were a sultan”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYG6lw7tJZw

“If I were a sultan I would have three wives and would be surrounded by triple beauty. It if not bad to have three wives… But from the other side… it not bad to live without a wife so if I were a sultan I would be a bachelor!”

The Diamond Arm

I refer to the Wikipedia article for a handful of best phrases from the movie, you can see them here. The plot is as follows: common Soviet citizen goes abroad and by chance becomes involved in smuggling of diamonds that are buried in plaster on his arm. Miscreants try to use every tricks to ensnare their victim but every time he is rescued by lucky circumstances. It reminds of Pierre Richard’s character of Grand Blonde.

Ivan Vasilyevich: Back To the Future

The summary is here from Wikipedia:

The movie begins in 1973 Moscow, where Engineer Shoorik (Aleksandr Demyanenko) is working on a time machine in his apartment. By accident, he sends Ivan Vasilevich Bunsha (Yuri Yakovlev), an apartment building manager, and George Miloslavsky (Leonid Kuravlev), a small-time burglar, back into the time of Ivan IV. The pair is forced to disguise themselves, with Bunsha dressing up as Ivan IV and Miloslavsky as a knyaz of the same name (who everybody thought was executed by the tsar). At the same time, the real Ivan IV (also played by Yuri Yakovlev) is sent by the same machine into Shoorik’s apartment, he has to deal with modern-day life while Shoorik tries to fix the machine so that everyone can be brought back to their proper place in time. As the police (tipped off by a neighbor who was burgled by Miloslavsky) close in on Shoorik, who is frantically trying to repair the machine, the cover of Bunsha and Miloslavsky is blown and they have to fight off the palace guards, who find out that Bunsha is not the real Ivan IV. The movie ends with Bunsha, Miloslavsky, and Ivan IV all transported back to their proper places, although the entire thing is revealed to be a dream by Shoorik.

Well, as there were 60 million tickets sold for this movie in the year 1973 everybody knows it. But when I ask my friends who originally wrote a script hardly anyone can answer, and this is Mikhail Bulgakov! Yes, it was written in 1930-es and then made into  a movie to represent 1970-es with more modern surronding and a few jokes related to modern appliances being weird to a Russian Tzar who happened to come to the future through centuries.

I have already put a small article on that in my other blog.

Here is a nice song from this movie:

And I was thrilled to see THIS VERY NICE add-on (there is no episode in the movie itself, I do not know about where this comes from but it is like from inside the movie!). Enjoy THIS nice nice romantic song, starring Selezneva and Pugovkin:

“People lose each other, pass each other without noticing and then do not find again.”

Irony of Fate

To say frankly, I am not a great fan of this movie. It is more lyric and relates to inner problems in cross-gender relationships. A lot of music. Drunken man goes to a wrong city and mistakes another lady’s apartment for his own. The memorable phrase that comes to my mind: Every year I and my friends go to sauna! (That is the outset of the plot)

 

The captioning data is in French language so if you know it you can understand what he sings. The song is called If You Do Not Have an Aunt. Catch the lyric mood of this movie. It is broadcast EVERY new year on all Russian and Ukrainian channels, like a standard Christmas movie that you cannot miss, you know…

Gentlemen of Fortune

Masterpiece. No doubt. The plot is as follows:

Gentlemen of Fortune (1971) (Russian: Джентльмены удачи, Dzhentlmeny udachi) is one of the best-known Russian comedies of all time (filmed at Mosfilm). The stars of the film include famous Russian actors such as Savely Kramarov, Yevgeny Leonov, George Vitsin, and Radner Muratov. The movie follows the story of a man named Troshkin that looks exactly like a criminal called Docent that has stolen Alexander the Great’s helmet during an archeological mission. After the police puts him in with the real criminals to get information, he must pretend to be the actual criminal to find the missing helmet. The film was the leader of Soviet distribution in 1972 and had 65.02 million viewers.

I will put a melody from this movie along with a small extract of the movie at the end:

There is a whole movie on Youtube cut to 9 episodes so if you understand a little Russian you can watch the whole masterpiece youself!

I hope you enjoyed my little overview and I am always glad to see you back on my website.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 12:22 am and is filed under Humor/Jokes, Proud to Be Ukrainian, Life in the USSR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.