Hacker Cinema
Kidnapping, Caucasian Style
Кавказская пленница, или Новые приключения Шурика
1967 · Film · 82 min
Directed by Leonid Gaidai
Shurik, a kind but naïve ethnography student, falls in love with the intelligent, athletic and beautiful All-Union Leninist Young Communist League member Nina. He has a rival in the wealthy comrade Saakhov, who concocts a kidnapping scheme to force Nina to marry him.
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3 comments on Hacker News
I wouldn't call "Ivan Vasilievich Changes His Profession" that either. It's more of a "Blazing Saddles" type movie with a cult following due to its catchphrases, but overall, it isn't very good. Even among movies by the same director, some slightly earlier titles like "Kidnapping, Caucasian Style" and "The Diamond Arm" from the late 1960s are much better, and hold up well against Hollywood contemporaries like "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" and "The Great Race". I'd even say that cinematically, "The Diamond Arm" is a league above the average Hollywood movie of the era. It was shot really beautifully and has wonderful use of color.
Anything by Gaidai [1]. "Kidnapping, Caucasian Style" [2] is probably the most popular or try "Operation 'Y'" [3], a movie that consist from three short novels with the same protagonist. Or, may be a good fit, his rendering of three O'Henry novels [4]: the first is the more serious one, the second is funnier but mostly conversational, and the third is burlesque action.
An example of a modern Russian comedy would be the "Yolki" series with [5] as the first installment.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0301145/ [2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060584/ [3] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059550/ [4] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056982/ [5] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1782568/
Most of us who lived in the soviet union, watched a couple of those at least a few times: - Кавказская пленница https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping,_Caucasian_Style - Операция „Ы“ и другие приключения Шурика https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Y_and_Shurik%27s_Other_Adventures - Джентльмены удачи https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentlemen_of_Fortune - Ирония судьбы, или С лёгким паром! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irony_of_Fate
Last one is something you'd see every new years eve. (spoiler here) It uncovers a stupidity of cities in the USSR, when those were identical up to a street name.
My mom and dad would probably come up with a slightly different list of their favorites, nonetheless they would agree these can be called "true" classics.
The important bit to remember here is that all of that production was going through "checks" to make sure there are no anti-communist ideas in the movies. Creators had to either be very careful to disguise some of the sentiment or not to have it.
At the end of the day people were not idiots and understood the role of the government. We all had someone close who was a survivor from gulag or a returning labor camp prisoner or a displaced individual with no right to get back to his village. So our lives were kind of similar to everybody elses in the west, provided you eliminate those awful bits. And maybe because those terrible parts were absent in these movies, we were able to have a good laugh.
Honestly watch those and have a laugh. If it seems not funny then try learning some russian and watch them again :D I know it is a terrible dad joke.