Hacker Cinema
The Diamond Arm
Бриллиантовая рука
1969 · Film · 94 min
Directed by Leonid Gaidai
A diamond smuggling operation goes wrong when an ordinary Soviet citizen becomes unwittingly involved, and the criminals are forced to court him to retrieve their diamonds.
4 positivefrom 4 commenters
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5 comments on Hacker News
> "The Diamond Arm" is a league above the average Hollywood movie of the era.
OK, even if true, that's only one movie :) I mean, ask any person from that era and they'll tell you it's their favorite. Kind of unfair to compare the only shining example to the "Hollywood average".
> "Ivan Vasilievich Changes His Profession" was made in 1973 on a budget that was modest even by Soviet standards. It looks like a cheap TV movie
To be fair, it looks just like any other Soviet movie from that era ("The Diamond Arm", "Afonya", "Shurik's Adventures", etc.), with the exception of the few that were considered "mega projects' by the government ("War and Peace").
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.
As mentioned, the most popular Soviet spy film is the series ‘Seventeen Moments of Spring’ which is more of a procedural in the approach and certainly aims for a more realistic portrayal—though still with plenty of heroics, of course. A close Western analogue, in terms of the mood, is actually ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ from 1965.
‘The Diamond Arm’/‘Бриллиантовая рука’, which was played to death on Soviet and post-Soviet TV, is in fact a clever inversion of the whole adventure genre that was popular in the 60s and 70s.
Mosfilm, the huge Soviet-era movie studio, has published a sizable portion of their catalog for free viewing on YouTube: http://youtube.com/mosfilm.
A lot of them have English subtitles. Kin-dza-dza is indeed up there. Brilliantovaya Ruka (The Diamond Arm) is another favorite of mine available with subtitles. And perhaps the most popular is the holiday classic The Irony of Fate.