“Gentlemen of Fortune” is a cult Soviet comedy filmed in 1971, directed by Alexander Sery. The film instantly became a favorite among viewers and spawned countless quotes, many of which have firmly entered everyday speech and remain recognizable decades later.
About the Film
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Director: Alexander Sery.
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Screenwriters: Georgiy Daneliya and Victoria Tokareva.
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Genre: Comedy, crime, adventure.
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Premiere: December 13, 1971.
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Studio: Mosfilm.
Plot
The plot revolves around the theft of a unique golden helmet of Alexander the Great by a gang led by a thief nicknamed the Professor (Yevgeny Leonov) . At the same time in Moscow, the head of a kindergarten, the kind-hearted Yevgeny Ivanovich Troshkin (also Yevgeny Leonov) , turns out to be strikingly similar to the gang leader. The police persuade Troshkin to take advantage of this resemblance: to infiltrate the gang under the guise of the Professor, who supposedly lost his memory after a blow to the head, and find the helmet.
Troshkin is sent to a Central Asian colony where the Professor’s accomplices — Snort (Georgiy Vitsin) and Squinty (Saveliy Kramarov) — are serving their sentences. To facilitate the search, a prison break is staged, but by mistake, a small-time swindler, Vasily Alibabayevich (Radner Muratov) , joins them. The whole quartet heads to Moscow, where Troshkin, while trying to find the helmet, simultaneously attempts to reform his hapless accomplices.
Cast
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Yevgeny Leonov as Yevgeny Ivanovich Troshkin / The Professor (Alexander Alexandrovich Bely)
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Georgiy Vitsin as Snort (Gavrila Petrovich Sheremetyev)
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Saveliy Kramarov as Squinty (Fyodor Petrovich Ermakov)
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Radner Muratov as Vasily Alibabayevich Alibaba
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Erast Garin as Professor Maltsev
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The film also starred: Natalya Fateyeva, Oleg Vidov, Anatoli Papanov, Lyubov Sokolova, Nikolai Olyalin and others.
Behind-the-Scenes Facts
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The film was shot in just three months, from February to April 1971. The prison scenes and the escape were filmed in Samarkand (Uzbekistan), while the Moscow episodes were shot in the capital and Serebryany Bor.
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Due to the abundance of prison slang in the script, added by director Alexander Sery (who had personal experience with incarceration), the film was initially withheld from release. Permission was granted personally by Leonid Brezhnev after a private screening. To soften the language, many criminal terms were replaced with comical ones: “radish” (редиска), “sausage”, “Hamburg rooster”, “Nebuchadnezzar”.
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The famous scene with the camel spitting on Squinty was filmed using foamed shampoo — the animal didn’t actually spit.
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The episode where the characters rub themselves with snow in the cold happened spontaneously. Radner Muratov was late for the shoot and didn’t know the other actors had agreed not to strip down (it was very cold). He came out on set in just swimming trunks, and Saveliy Kramarov, in retaliation, started rubbing him with snow. This improvisation was kept in the film.
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The mixture in the tank that the fugitives climb out of wasn’t cement, but a specially prepared concoction of bread starter, semolina porridge, and onion essence to avoid harming the actors.
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Initially, Frunzik Mkrtchyan, Vladimir Etush, and Ilya Rutberg were considered for the role of Vasily Alibabayevich, but Mkrtchyan couldn’t make it to the filming.
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Oleg Vidov (playing the policeman disguised as a taxi driver) couldn’t stop laughing during the car scenes, watching Saveliy Kramarov’s improvisations, so scenes had to be reshot several times.
Reception and Legacy
In 1972, the film became the absolute leader of the Soviet box office, with over 65 million viewers. With a budget of 400,000 rubles, the box office grossed 30 million. The film generated a huge number of catchphrases, such as “Dinner is served, please sit down to eat! (literally ‘sit down to gobble it up, please’)” (“Кушать подано, садитесь жрать, пожалуйста!”), “That’s it, no more movie, the electricity ran out!” (“Всё, кина не будет, электричество кончилось!”), “Why did you run? — Everyone ran, and I ran” (“А ты зачем бежал? — Все побежали, и я побежал”), “A radish is a bad person” (“Редиска — нехороший человек”) and many others. Mosfilm studio considers this picture the most successful in its history.