Why Gaidai didn't want to shoot the trinity of hooligans and other interesting facts about the comedy about Shurik's adventures

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Last summer, the comedy "Operation Y" and other adventures of Shurik "celebrated its anniversary - she turned 55. Despite its considerable age, the film is still loved by more than one generation of our compatriots, and the phrases from it have long gone to the people. Interestingly, even the creator of the picture, Leonid Gaidai, did not expect such a success of his brainchild: the picture became the leader of the film distribution in 1965, and then almost 70 million people watched it.

How from two short stories three appeared

Leonid Gaidai has always been good at short films. Remember at least the mini-comedy "Moonshiners" and "The Watchdog Dog and the Unusual Cross", in which the trinity of hooligans appeared - Coward, Goonies and Experienced. And after the success of "Business People", the director decided to continue filming "shorty." Just at that time, screenwriters Yakov Kostyukovsky and Maurice Slobodskoy came to him with a proposal to shoot some more funny story with the participation of the beloved viewers of the trio of Vitsin, Nikulin and Morgunov. Gaidai agreed to work on the almanac, but set a condition that this time the story will be bright and kind, and in its center there will be a positive hero. As for the hooligans, they should not have appeared in the picture at all, since Leonid Iovich really did not like to repeat himself.

Initially, the protagonist of the story was student Vladik Arkov. And this is the first time in many years when a university student was shown from the best side, and not a dude or a scoundrel, because at that time it was customary to make films about peasants and workers. In addition, Gaidai wrote off the main character from himself: a thin bespectacled man, a loving verse about a good girl Lida Yaroslav Smelyakov … But then the name of the main character had to be changed due to censorship. After all, Vladik is not only Vladislav, but also Vladlen. And the name is short for "Vladimir Lenin". In general, nobody allowed to laugh at the leader of the world proletariat. This is how Shurik appeared. The initial scenario involved the shooting of two short stories: in one of them, the protagonist re-educates a brute, in the other, he prepares a foolish applicant for admission to the institute. Later, the script was changed, and the girl Lida appeared in the second story. But for a full-fledged film there had to be three short stories, and then Kostyukovsky and Slobodsky persuaded Gaidai to return Coward, Dunce and Experienced to the screen.

The non-trivial title of the comedy also did not appear immediately. She originally starred under the tentative title "Frivolous Stories." According to one version, "Operation" Y "…" was proposed by the most powerful man in "Mosfilm" Ivan Pyryev, when most of the material was filmed. According to another, in the beginning "Operation" U "appeared …". Only the authors, after finishing writing the script, well noted this case. One of them was severely tormented the next day with a hangover, but when asked to "heal" he could only grimace and say: "Yyyyyyy …". Then it dawned on Gaidai, and he, correcting the pronunciation from "hangover", brought out the intriguing "Y", "so that no one would guess.

How brunette Demyanenko almost lost his hair in attempts to become a blonde

If everything was clear with Georgy Vitsin, Yuri Nikulin and Yevgeny Morgunov, then we had to look for other actors a little longer. For example, the role of the foreman was to be played by Vladimir Vysotsky. But he was replaced by Mikhail Pugovkin, whom the filmmakers initially saw in the form of a "fifteen-day" brute. As a result, the image of the latter was embodied on the screen by Alexey Smirnov. By the way, there is still an opinion that the character who uttered the phrase "Announce the entire list, please" was played by Leonid Gaidai. But in fact, it turned out to be a locksmith Oleg Skvortsov, who often appeared in episodes of various films. The director himself starred in the crowd. The aspiring actress Natalya Selezneva went to audition for the role of Lida from the beach, not hoping for success. Gaidai offered her to undress, but the girl was embarrassed. Then the director went for a trick: "Of course, I like you, but it seems to me that your figure is not very good …".

This very much hurt the pride of the actress, and she immediately took off her dress, remaining in one swimsuit. And Leonid Iovich needed such a test in order to understand whether the girl could stay in her underwear in the frame (at that time this was a very brave act). This role was considered by Alexander Zbruev, Evgeny Petrosyan, Vitaly Solomin, Evgeny Zharikov, Andrei Mironov and other artists. In the end, the artistic council almost approved Valery Nosik, but Gaidai was still in search. And then he came across a photograph of Alexander Demyanenko, with whom the director had already crossed paths several times. He realized that this was what was needed, and immediately went to Leningrad, where the actor lived, for negotiations.

It didn't take long to beg, and the brunette Demyanenko, for the sake of the role, even agreed to become a blonde (the hair color was supposed to once again emphasize the "light" moral character of the protagonist). However, there were no normal paints then, and after the actor was smeared with a strange substance on his head, blisters popped out on the skin. But Gaidai was pleased with the result. Valery Nosik, by the way, also did not remain without work, playing a superstitious student gambler.

Rain in December and other curiosities during filming

Filming took place in 4 cities. So, one of the chemical laboratories of "Mosfilm" turned into a police yard, and the construction footage was carried out in the metropolitan area of Sviblovo, which was just emerging then. But it was not possible to cope in the summer in Moscow, then the film crew flew to Baku, however, the weather conditions were not happy here either. We moved to Odessa, but Demyanenko suddenly fell ill, so the work had to be postponed until the end of October. And when the shooting resumed, nature again showed character here, so the episodes in Lida's apartment were filmed in those rare moments when the sun peeped out. The scenes with the evil dog were also prepared in the Ukrainian city. But most of all, the creators had to work hard to make the animal “shrug its shoulders” in bewilderment (remember when Lida and Shurik passed him without even noticing?). They decided to shoot facial expressions as follows: they took the dog in close-up, and at this time the director lay down under him and raised his paws so that it turned out as if the pet was surprised.

In Odessa, they found the necessary construction site to complete the filming of the short story "Partner". But here Demyaneko almost died: the bitumen in which he fell according to the plot caught fire, and a real fire began. Fortunately, the fire was extinguished in time. The last "summer" shots had to be filmed in the spring in Yalta. It was decided to make the third short story in Leningrad in December, so that it would probably snow. But this year, even at the beginning of winter, it rained, and the 12 dump trucks of snow brought in immediately melted. Then the white cover was replaced with cotton wool and mothballs, which, by the way, looked very naturalistic in the frames.

But "Wait a locomotive" initially did not like the censors, but Gaidai defended the song, depriving it of one verse, which sounded like this: "Let me be a bastard, I'll get a file - I'll cut her grate. Let the moon shine with its insidious light, But I'm out of I'll run away from the slammers. "It is still not known for certain who wrote the famous composition. According to the generally accepted version, its author is a recidivist thief Nikolai Ivanovsky, who, by the way, had a dark past that did not prevent him from becoming a member of the Writers' Union and working at Mosfilm.”The warehouse robbery also went wrong. Yuri Nikulin later said: “For the episode“Fight with foil”they invited a fencing teacher who taught us to fight with foil. After a few sessions, we fought like real athletes. They showed the fight to Leonid Gaidai. He looked bored and said: - You fight well, but all this is boring, and it should be funny. We have a comedy."

Then the director came up with a trick with a bottle of wine, which was pierced by Shurik. In the process of creating a comedy, there was a place for improvisation. The scene, where Nikulin's character stumbles upon a skeleton, was re-shot 8 times, but it was still impossible to get a good shot. During one of the breaks, the actor decided to joke and put his finger in his jaws, which immediately closed, and Yuri was genuinely frightened. As it turned out, by pure chance the operator did not turn off the camera at this time, and they decided to completely leave this scene in the finished version of the comedy.

An unexpected triumph

What happened was shown to the artistic council. Ivan Pyriev was categorical: “In a comedy, the main thing is clarity and tact in behavior. But sometimes this tactfulness of execution is not enough. Here is Morgunov. He is not funny, but often unpleasant. The same thing happens with Vitsin. His demeanor was excellent in "Watchdog the Dog," but here a lot seems fake. You can't work on the same paint all the time … In this respect, Nikulin is wonderful. In each scene he is original, but always different …”The official was so determined that he demanded to stop filming Mikhail Pugovkin and Yevgeny Morgunov. Coincidence or not, but it was these actors who received almost half as much for their work as Georgy Vitsin and Yuri Nikulin.

The script-editorial board also found flaws in "Operation Y" … ". So, she insistently asked to remove the frame where the hero of Alexei Smirnov "turns" into a negro, considering that this scene is optional. She also did not like the episode with the apparatus during the student exam. In the opinion of the members of the instance, it was out of the general style of the novel. Fortunately, Gaidai defended these scenes, but nevertheless he remade some episodes. So, the film had to end with the Coward, the Experienced and the Goonies being in the police. Pyryev thought that this was a bad ending, and suggested that we stop at how the grandmother pulls the hooligans on a rope. Neither the filmmakers nor the artistic council expected success. After the premiere of the comedy, critics thought that Smirnov was too charming in the role of a lawbreaker, and Shurik was cruel in the frame, where he punished his ward with rods. They found fault with the phrase: "We must, Fedya, we must!". It would seem like a common name, common words. But Fedya was ironically called Fidel Castro in the Soviet elite, and in the context one could discern a threat to the Cuban leader himself. Naturally, the censors did not like the scene with Lida's undressing. "That is, how does this modest Soviet girl take off her clothes in front of a stranger and go to bed with him?" - they were indignant. And other editors were unhappy with the fact that the hooligans trying to rob the warehouse were caught not by the valiant police and not by Shurik at least, but by a simple granny - "God's dandelion."

Meanwhile, there was a stir in cinemas, and the box office was closed several days before the premiere, as all tickets were sold out. Naturally, the actors who played in the comedy became popular favorites, and Alexander Demyanenko could not calmly walk down the street, because he was always recognized. Later, the actor played Shurik twice more: in "Ivan Vasilievich …" his hero was an inventor, and in "Prisoner of the Caucasus …" he became an ethnographer. But many viewers did not notice that these were different characters, for them the image remained indivisible. Subsequently, the actor himself recalled with some irritation the role that made him famous. After all, many still believe that after Shurik he did little to act in films. But this is not so: in his filmography after "Operation" Y … "there are more than nine dozen films. But in the audience's consciousness, he remained Shurik.