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According to the filming locations of the movie "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia". The history of the film "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia"

According to the filming locations of the movie "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia". The history of the film "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia"

15.03.2019

Movie " Incredible adventure Italians in Russia ”was released on April 8, 1974 and took fourth place in the annual box office. It would not be an exaggeration to say that basically the audience went to Mironov. Therefore, it is no coincidence that on October 16 of the same year he was awarded the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR.

Fifty million viewers watched the comedy in one year, and it occupies 39th place in the list of the highest grossing Soviet films.

Eldar Ryazanov and Emil Braginsky wrote an application for a script for a joint Soviet-Italian film comedy back in 1970. It was called Spaghetti in Russian. Goskino did not like the application: they said that the Italians were somehow unpositive, rogue and they needed to be redone. Co-authors who were forced to "redo" all their lives national heroes, responded with an outraged refusal.

Quote from the authors' application: “The plot is based on the misadventures of a group of Italian adventurers who are trying to take possession of the jewels buried in Yaroslavl during the revolution. The situation chosen by the authors makes it possible to deploy a fun and exciting comedy action. A significant place in the future film is given to the image of the Soviet policeman Serebryakov, which is positively interpreted by the authors.

Meanwhile, real Italians - the firm "Dino de Laurentiis" fully confirmed the myth of the fraudulent nature of their nation, owing "Mosfilm" a serious amount after the filming of the film "Waterloo" by Sergei Bondarchuk. It was possible to return the money only by starting a new joint production. So the application of Ryazanov and Braginsky was "safely" reanimated.

This is how posters in the USSR and other countries looked like, where they showed "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia."

The unfortunate co-authors began to invent tricks: landing an airplane on a highway, jumping while a bridge was being opened, and risky scenes with a lion. The plot approved by the Italian co-authors was again carried to the producer, and he ordered that some episode in GUM be inserted into the picture: there are no such huge stores in Europe, and it will impress the audience.

As a result, Ryazanov himself became the director. There was a moment when he said: “I won’t shoot such nonsense!”. However, the leaders of Goskino put pressure on Ryazanov, and he agreed. The preparatory period for filming in Russia lasted thirty-one days - by Soviet standards, this was catastrophically short, with us, almost every trick was prepared for several months. Filming began on May 14, 1973 in Moscow.

Within two months, nine-tenths of the entire film was shot. The director himself admitted that he had never filmed at such a pace. The film crew worked two shifts daily, including Saturday. The Italian actors could not stand the rhythm of filming and complained to their patron. Ryazanov knew that there was an opinion in the West that Russian actors were extremely slow. And his picture proved the opposite - foreigners saved.

The costumes for the film sent by the Italians turned out to be such rags that the indignant Ryazanov ordered a telegram to be sent to Rome stating that Mosfilm was not a junk shop. As it turned out later, she was not sent, so as not to complicate relations with partners.

No matter how Eldar Alexandrovich Ryazanov puffed and protested against the Italian arbitrariness, he had to fulfill all the wishes of his partners. And there was GUM, and a lion, and obligatory Russian nesting dolls, and a plane landing on a highway, and numerous car stunts, and a gas station explosion, and numerous views of Leningrad and Moscow. So it turned out to be a completely finished essay on the topic “ Soviet Union through the eyes of foreign guests.

These same guests did what they wanted. Hotels were provided during filming in Italy low level. They could not (or did not want to?) organize the work at the required level, cut down on the extras, refused to draw the necessary signs, emphasized in every possible way who was the boss in the house. Ryazanov even had to declare a boycott and threaten absenteeism from work.

Italian actors also behaved as they wanted. Sometimes it was difficult to cope with the assigned tasks. Sometimes they were cowardly when it was necessary to perform some difficult trick. And in some scenes, the text was scribbled so non-stop that the actress Olga Aroseva, who played the mother of the protagonist, could not insert her line. As a result, the actress had to resort to extreme measures: she plugged the throat of one of the Italian partners with a towel and only then managed to utter her words.

But still, our artists were not all that bad. Our (and in the picture there are three of them - Andrey Mironov, Olga Aroseva and Evgeny Evstigneev) got a rare opportunity to spend time in Italy for free. Capstrana, and what a! For those times sweet dream Soviet man. Evstigneev, who played the colorful Lame in The Italians, also brought his second wife, Lilia Zhurkina, to Rome.

Andrei Mironov very rarely used the services of understudies and stuntmen, and insisted on doing all the stunts himself. For example, in the episode when his hero climbed an 11-meter ladder, which was on a fire truck moving at a speed of 60 km per hour. The actor got out of the cab, climbed onto the stairs, made his way on all fours to its end, slid down onto the roof of the Zhiguli driving under the stairs and climbed into the cabin. Even for an experienced stuntman, this was a difficult trick.

Mironov also descended from the window of the sixth floor of the Astoria Hotel, holding the carpet with his hands, and the scene in which Captain Vasilyev swam under water, diving under water for jewelry, was filmed in Naples, and therefore Andrei Mironov sank to the bottom of a warm mediterranean sea and not the cold Neva.

To give the viewer the impression that the trick was performed by artists, they needed close-ups. They persuaded Mironov, and he hung over the river on the rearing wing of the bridge, the height of which was approximately 15 storey building. Below, the Neva was splashing, a motor ship was sailing under Mironov. Mironov struggled to climb the bridge for real. Filmed the entire episode in one day.

Most of the sculptural images of lions shown in the film have never been in reality in Leningrad, for example, near the Singing Chapel and not far from the Italian Bridge across the Griboyedov Canal.

The scene with the Tu-134 landing was filmed at the Ulyanovsk airfield, at the pilot school civil aviation, runway "made up" under the highway. The deputy head of the school, Ivan Antonovich Tarashchan, suggested: "Take a letter from the Ministry of Civil Aviation, in which they will allow me to fly in violation of the instructions, and I will do the trick."

However, the Ministry of Civil Aviation responded with a categorical refusal. Then the pilot Tarashchan demanded: "Cars - only cars, driving - only pilots: in this emergency it will be easier for them to navigate instantly and accurately." IN total the plane landed 6 times and each time flawlessly. The shots where the Tu-134 is driving along the highway, and cars scurrying under it, were filmed on the reserve lane. In some shots of the plane landing scene, uncamouflaged airport radar equipment is visible.

In the scene where the mobster gets stuck in the plane's window and it becomes covered in ice, a mica shell was actually used, made by special effects master Giulio Molinari. Sprinkled with talc and naphthalene, the shell sparkled and shimmered, it was possible to break off pieces from it. The role of the doctor was played by Eldar Ryazanov himself.

In those years, this comedy hosted a "presentation" newest model Zhiguli VAZ-2103. "Troika", or "treshka", in 1974 was the most expensive and prestigious passenger car of a small class of the domestic auto industry. Having barely appeared on the movie screen, the VAZ-2103 became a dream car for tens of millions of Soviet people.

In comparison with the clumsily made “Zaporozhets” and “Moskvichs”, VAZ cars were quite deservedly perceived Soviet people like real foreigners. In the course of the “Adventures of the Italians” action, the red VAZ-2103 famously swept through the mud, flew over the fence, hit its sides against various obstacles, and after turning into a pile of crumpled iron, it was famously restored by workers of the Soviet car service. Of course, even our kids understand that several identical cars take part in the filming.

But then the producer of the picture appeared and said that Italian Sergio Mioni would perform all the tricks. Arriving in Moscow, he wrote whole list props he needs. Were in this list and seat belts. What it is, few people in the USSR then imagined. The assistant director of the picture ran and brought him a fire hose: "Let's grab it with two bolts to the body - and order." Hearing this, Mioni fainted. Then they sent him real belts from Italy.

In the distant 70s in our country, in the process of filming, only decommissioned cars were allowed to be beaten. This rule did not apply to the Italians, so while working on the "Incredible Adventures" of the five brand new Zhiguli, they shattered as many as three pieces. However, the game was worth the candle. After the comedy was released in foreign film distribution, it made an excellent advertisement for the Volga Automobile Plant, whose products were just beginning to be purchased Western countries.

Continuing the car-water theme, it is worth recalling the episode in which the Moskvich-412 manufactured by AZLK (it differed from the Izhevsk counterpart only in the shape of headlights and radiator lining) forces a water barrier along the bottom of a reservoir. It was at this moment that a phrase was uttered that caused a frenzied burst of laughter in the cinema halls - an Italian sitting in the passenger seat asks the driver: “Be careful, you will crush the fish!”

During all car stunts, cars show miracles of regeneration: when the heroes get into Moskvich on a trailer, the bumper is already bent and the feed is raised, there is also no rear window; in the scene where the Muscovite is catching up with the Zhiguli, the first car is intact, and the dents are already visible on the second, after a strong blow to the rear, the Zhiguli flies over the river with a slightly dented rear bumper.

And in the scene when the Moskvich is driving down the slope on the roof, it is clear that there is no engine or transmission on the car, and the wheels are welded to pipes instead of bridges, so when the Zhiguli “throws” the Moskvich from the roof, the latter does not work at all

During the filming of the explosion of a gas station, artist Mikhail Bogdanov erected a gas station that was no different from his prototypes, as a result, many cars drove up to refuel.

By the way, Alighiero Noskose, who played Antonio, became famous in Italy for parodying stars and politicians. He helped the leaders of the P-2 Masonic lodge, who in the late 1970s were preparing a coup d'état in Italy. Alighiero called public figures and spoke to them with the voices of politicians.

With an actor named King - a lion who grew up in the apartment of a Baku architect - the relationship also did not work out. Training and home education are not the same thing at all.

The wayward beast did not give a damn about the tight shooting schedule, the budget, the Soviet-Italian relations - he ignored the script and did only what he wanted. He did not want to jump into the window of the nesting dolls warehouse - and the group dutifully waited for three nights. On the fourth, King became interested in something inside the warehouse, and he jumped.

Lev King was a pet - he lived in the Berberov family, who became famous throughout the country for their apartment menagerie. King needed a whole refrigerator of food for lunch: a few kilograms of meat, eggs, fish oil. The Berberovs' salary was small, and it was very difficult to feed a huge adult lion. So they accepted the filming offer.

When filming Lion King, his owner, after reading the script, said, “The script is very bad. It does not take into account even a hundredth of the capabilities of my King. And King can do anything! After that, the script was replenished with new episodes and stunts. However, in reality it turned out that the lion is lazy, refused to do many tricks the first time. In one of the episodes, the lion King got up on his hind legs and scratched the back of an Italian actor. And Mironov played three doubles with the beast.

Then the actor admitted that he was wildly afraid. But, apparently, the king of beasts liked the charming blond, and he did not touch him. And the film included a unique shot of a policeman teaching a lion.

After that, Ryazanov promised himself never to be an animal director again.

Work in "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia" became a star for King and last hour. As a temporary living space for the period of filming in Leningrad, the whole school was given to the family. At some point, the lion was left in the school gym for a few minutes unattended. King became interested in an onlooker in the school garden.

The girl who was waiting for him at the fence shouted: “Help, the lion is tearing a man!”. Militia lieutenant Gurov was returning from a lunch break. He heard screams, ran up to the fence, without understanding what was happening, shot at King. The lion immediately moved away from the guy towards the broken window. But Gurov unloaded the entire clip into King.

The showing of the Tu-144 supersonic aircraft was supposed to end the film. It was his rise that was supposed to “freeze” against the backdrop of the closing credits of the film. But, at the insistence of party leaders, these shots were replaced with shots of an Il-62 taking off. Just a year before the release of the film, the Tu-144 crashed at the air show in Le Bourget.

The film "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia" - light, dynamic and not particularly claiming anything - did not gain fame in the foreign box office (de Laurentiis, they say, regretted that he did not take foreign stars in the picture), but in our country they watched it with pleasure. Eldar Ryazanov did not consider him his luck. And in vain, this picture is much stronger than many of his highly controversial paintings. last period. So in this case, the audience knows better - they have always been supportive of the "Italians".

The film "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia" was released on April 8, 1974 and took fourth place in the annual box office. It would not be an exaggeration to say that basically the audience went to Mironov. Therefore, it is no coincidence that on October 16 of the same year he was awarded the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR.
Fifty million viewers watched the comedy in one year, and it occupies 39th place in the list of the highest grossing Soviet films.

Eldar Ryazanov and Emil Braginsky wrote an application for a script for a joint Soviet-Italian film comedy back in 1970. It was called Spaghetti in Russian. Goskino did not like the application: they said that the Italians were somehow unpositive, rogue and they needed to be redone. The co-authors, who had been forced to “remake” domestic heroes all their lives, responded with an indignant refusal.

I quote the authors of the application: “The plot is based on the misadventures of a group of Italian adventurers who are trying to take possession of the jewels buried in Yaroslavl during the revolution. The situation chosen by the authors makes it possible to deploy a fun and exciting comedy action. A significant place in the future film is given to the image of the Soviet policeman Serebryakov, which is positively interpreted by the authors.
Meanwhile, real Italians - the firm "Dino de Laurentiis" fully confirmed the myth of the fraudulent nature of their nation, owing "Mosfilm" a serious amount after the filming of the film "Waterloo" by Sergei Bondarchuk. It was possible to return the money only by starting a new joint production. So the application of Ryazanov and Braginsky was "safely" reanimated.
This is what posters in the USSR and other countries looked like, where they showed "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia"

However, the producer Dino de Laurentiis told our creators - Everything that you wrote is nonsense, I need a chase film consisting of stunts. The only thing that can be saved is the story of the living lion.
The unfortunate co-authors began to invent tricks: landing an airplane on a highway, jumping while a bridge was being opened, and risky scenes with a lion. The plot approved by the Italian co-authors was again carried to the producer, and he ordered that some episode in GUM be inserted into the picture: there are no such huge stores in Europe, and it will impress the audience.

But still, our artists were not all that bad. Our (and in the picture there are three of them - Andrey Mironov, Olga Aroseva and Evgeny Evstigneev) got a rare opportunity to spend time in Italy for free. Capstrana, and what a! At that time, the sweet dream of a Soviet person. Evstigneev, who played the colorful Lame in The Italians, also brought his second wife, Lilia Zhurkina, to Rome.

Mironov also descended from the window of the sixth floor of the Astoria Hotel, holding the carpet with his hands, and the scene in which Captain Vasiliev swam under water, diving under water for jewelry, was filmed in Naples, and therefore Andrei Mironov sank to the bottom of the warm Mediterranean Sea, not the cold Neva.

In the trick with a divorced bridge, the only scene in the film with the participation of understudies (Ninetto Davoli (Giuseppe) jumped by himself, without an understudy), in the episode where the steamer sails under the bridge (they filmed the steamer "Taras Shevchenko", whose cabin was increased by 2.5 meters) participated circus students.
To give the viewer the impression that the trick was performed by the artists, their close-ups were needed. Mironov was persuaded, and he hung over the river on the rearing wing of the bridge, the height of which was approximately 15 storey building. Below, the Neva was splashing, a motor ship was sailing under Mironov. Mironov struggled to climb the bridge for real. Filmed the entire episode in one day.

Most of the sculptural images of lions shown in the film have never been in reality in Leningrad, for example, near the Singing Chapel and not far from the Italian Bridge across the Griboyedov Canal.

The scene with the Tu-134 landing was filmed at the Ulyanovsk airfield, at the school of civil aviation pilots, the runway was “made up” under the highway. The deputy head of the school, Ivan Antonovich Tarashchan, suggested: "Take a letter from the Ministry of Civil Aviation, in which they will allow me to fly in violation of the instructions, and I will do the trick."

However, the Ministry of Civil Aviation responded with a categorical refusal. Then the pilot Tarashchan demanded: "Cars - only cars, driving - only pilots: in this emergency it will be easier for them to navigate instantly and accurately." In total, the plane landed 6 times and each time flawlessly. The shots where the Tu-134 is driving along the highway, and cars scurrying under it, were filmed on the reserve lane. In some shots of the plane landing scene, uncamouflaged airport radar equipment is visible.

In those years, this comedy hosted a “presentation” of the latest Zhiguli model, the VAZ-2103. "Troika", or "treshka", in 1974 was the most expensive and prestigious passenger car of a small class of the domestic auto industry. Having barely appeared on the movie screen, the VAZ-2103 became a dream car for tens of millions of Soviet people.

A lot of chrome parts, a hitherto unseen tachometer, armrests and headrests, as well as a powerful engine - all this made the "troika" a car standard. To this should be added the excellent build quality of the Zhiguli, especially cars in export versions. Many components for them were purchased for foreign currency in Italy, Hungary and other foreign countries.
In comparison with the clumsily made "Zaporozhets" and "Moskvichs", VAZ cars were quite deservedly perceived by Soviet people as real foreign cars. In the course of the “Adventures of the Italians” action, the red VAZ-2103 famously swept through the mud, flew over the fence, hit its sides against various obstacles, and after turning into a pile of crumpled iron, it was famously restored by workers of the Soviet car service. Of course, even our kids understand that several identical cars take part in the filming.

Since the film included a lot of car stunts, our foreign partners bought for filming not even two, but five pieces of Moskvich-412 and VAZ-2103. A team of Soviet stuntmen began to prepare cars for filming.
But then the producer of the picture appeared and said that Italian Sergio Mioni would perform all the tricks. Arriving in Moscow, he wrote a whole list of props he needed. Were in this list and seat belts. What it is, few people in the USSR then imagined. The assistant director of the picture ran and brought him a fire hose: "Let's grab it with two bolts to the body - and order." Hearing this, Mioni fainted. Then they sent him real belts from Italy.
In the distant 70s in our country, in the process of filming, only decommissioned cars were allowed to be beaten. This rule did not apply to the Italians, so while working on the "Incredible Adventures" of the five brand new Zhiguli, they shattered as many as three pieces. However, the game was worth the candle. After the comedy was released in foreign film distribution, it made an excellent advertisement for the Volga Automobile Plant, whose products were just beginning to be acquired by Western countries.
Continuing the car-water theme, it is worth recalling the episode in which the Moskvich-412 manufactured by AZLK (it differed from the Izhevsk counterpart only in the shape of headlights and radiator lining) forces a water barrier along the bottom of a reservoir. It was at this moment that a phrase was uttered that caused a frenzied burst of laughter in the cinema halls - an Italian sitting in the passenger seat asks the driver: “Be careful, you will crush the fish!”

Most of the stunts in the car chase were performed by Italian stunt driver Sergio Mioni. The episode when "Moskvich" and "Zhiguli" fall under a jet of water and mud, become "blind" and rush about, chasing each other, was performed by Soviet racers, they also carried out the entire driver's part of the act with a fire engine. By the way, leaving the Moskvich washed out from under the jets of water, the broken right headlight turned out to be restored a little earlier
During all car stunts, cars show miracles of regeneration: when the heroes get into Moskvich on a trailer, the bumper is already bent and the feed is raised, there is also no rear window; in the scene where the Muscovite is catching up with the Zhiguli, the first car is intact, and the dents are already visible on the second, after a strong blow to the rear, the Zhiguli flies over the river with a slightly dented rear bumper.
And in the scene when the Moskvich is driving down the slope on the roof, it is clear that there is no engine or transmission on the car, and the wheels are welded to pipes instead of bridges, so when the Zhiguli “throws” the Moskvich from the roof, the latter does not work at all
During the filming of the explosion of a gas station, artist Mikhail Bogdanov erected a gas station that was no different from his prototypes, as a result, many cars drove up to refuel.

After that, Ryazanov promised himself never to be an animal director again.

Work in "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia" was the star and the last hour for King. As a temporary living space for the period of filming in Leningrad, the whole school was given to the family. At one point, the lion was left unattended in the school gym for several minutes. King became interested in an onlooker in the school garden.
According to eyewitnesses, the guy began to make faces and jump, turning either face or back to the lion. For King, it was a call to play: the assistant rehearsed with him the episode for "Italians" when the lion runs after the man and knocks him to the ground. He stood on his hind legs, squeezed out the glass in the window, ran up to the guy and knocked him to the ground.
The girl who was waiting for him at the fence shouted: “Help, the lion is tearing a man!”. Militia lieutenant Gurov was returning from a lunch break. He heard screams, ran up to the fence, without understanding what was happening, shot at King. The lion immediately moved away from the guy towards the broken window. But Gurov unloaded the entire clip into King.
The showing of the Tu-144 supersonic aircraft was supposed to end the film. It was his rise that was supposed to “freeze” against the backdrop of the closing credits of the film. But, at the insistence of party leaders, these shots were replaced with shots of an Il-62 taking off. Just a year before the release of the film, the Tu-144 crashed at the air show in Le Bourget.

The film "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia" - light, dynamic and not particularly claiming anything - did not gain fame in the foreign box office (de Laurentiis, they say, regretted that he did not take foreign stars in the picture), but in our country they watched it with pleasure. Eldar Ryazanov did not consider him his luck. And in vain, this picture is much stronger than many of his highly controversial paintings of the last period. So in this case, the audience knows better - they have always been supportive of the "Italians".

Genre: comedy, adventure
The film starred: Andrey Mironov, Antonia Santilli, Ninetto Davoli, Alighiero Noschese, Tano Cimarosa, Gigi Ballista, Evgeny Evstigneev, Olga Aroseva, Anatoly Stepanov, Alexander Lukyanov, Valerian Vinogradov, Franca Sciutto
Directed by: Eldar Ryazanov, Franco E. Prosperi
Writers: Emil Braginsky, Eldar Ryazanov, Franco Castellano, Pipolo
Cinematographers: Mikhail Bits, Gabor Pogany
Artists: Alexander Zakharov, Mikhail Bogdanov
Producer: Luigi De Laurentiis
Country: USSR, Italy
The film premiered in Moscow on March 18, 1974, in Rome on January 31, 1974.

In 1973, a group of restorers repainted the façade of the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg. This was timed not to the 270th anniversary of the city, but to the arrival of a delegation from the Apennine Peninsula. The person at whose invitation this delegation arrived was called Eldar Ryazanov. He was going to shoot The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia.

The film "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia" was released on April 8, 1974 and took fourth place in the annual box office. It would not be an exaggeration to say that basically the audience went to Mironov. Therefore, it is no coincidence that on October 16 of the same year he was awarded the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR.
Fifty million viewers had fun over the tape in just one year.
True, Ryazanov then was not laughing. Ryazanov and Braginsky wrote an application for a script for a joint Soviet-Italian comedy film back in 1970. It was called Spaghetti in Russian. The Film Committee did not like the application: they said that the Italians were somehow unpositive, crooked and they needed to be redone. The co-authors, who had been forced to “remake” domestic heroes all their lives, responded with an indignant refusal.
I quote the authors of the application: “The plot is based on the misadventures of a group of Italian adventurers who are trying to take possession of the jewels buried in Yaroslavl during the revolution. The situation chosen by the authors makes it possible to deploy a fun and exciting comedy action. A significant place in the future film is given to the image of the Soviet policeman Serebryakov, which is positively interpreted by the authors.

Meanwhile, real Italians - the company "Dino de Laurentiis" fully confirmed the myth of the fraudulent nature of their nation, owing "Mosfilm" a serious amount after the filming of the film "Waterloo" by Sergei Bondarchuk. It was possible to return the money only by starting a new joint production. So the application of Ryazanov and Braginsky was "safely" reanimated.
“Everything you wrote is nonsense,” Dino de Laurentiis told our creators. “I need a stunt chase movie. The only thing that can be saved is the story of the living lion.
The unfortunate co-authors began to invent tricks: landing an airplane on a highway, jumping while a bridge was being opened, and risky scenes with a lion. The plot approved by the Italian co-authors was again carried to the producer, and he ordered that some episode in GUM be inserted into the picture: there are no such huge stores in Europe, and it will impress the audience.

And he also ordered to compose a scene where the characters throw cakes at each other - this is a trick that has been tested on the audience, it's funny. The pieces were inserted, the script was eventually approved by both sides, "Spaghetti in Russian" became "Italians in Russia". Ryazanov re-read the script, was horrified by the abundance of tricks and gloomily said: "I feel sorry for the director who will shoot it."
As a result, Ryazanov himself became the director. There was a moment when he said: “I won’t shoot such nonsense!”. However, the leaders of Goskino put pressure on Ryazanov, and he agreed. The preparatory period for filming in Russia lasted thirty-one days - by Soviet standards, it was catastrophically short, we had almost every trick prepared for several months. Filming began on May 14, 1973 in Moscow.
Within two months, nine-tenths of the entire film was shot. The director himself admitted that he had never filmed at such a pace. The film crew worked two shifts daily, including Saturday. The Italian actors could not stand the rhythm of filming and complained to their patron. Ryazanov knew that there was an opinion in the West that Russian actors were extremely slow. And his picture proved the opposite - foreigners saved.

The actors were chosen by the producers, which was, to put it mildly, unusual for Ryazanov. The Italians saved on everything, and the actors were no exception. Ryazanov dreamed of working with Vittorio Gassman, but since de Laurentiis did not initially believe in the success of the picture, no one even bothered the stars, they picked someone cheaper. Once Ryazanov approved a photograph of another candidate, and then received a message that the actor could not act in film - he was in prison for tax evasion.
The costumes for the film sent by the Italians turned out to be such rags that the indignant Ryazanov ordered a telegram to be sent to Rome stating that Mosfilm was not a junk shop. As it turned out later, she was not sent, so as not to complicate relations with partners.
No matter how Eldar Alexandrovich Ryazanov puffed and protested against the Italian arbitrariness, he had to fulfill all the wishes of his partners. And there was GUM, and a lion, and obligatory Russian nesting dolls, and a plane landing on a highway, and numerous car stunts, and a gas station explosion, and numerous views of Leningrad and Moscow. So it turned out to be a completely finished essay on the topic "The Soviet Union through the eyes of foreign guests."

These same guests did what they wanted. Low-end hotels were provided during filming in Italy. They could not (or did not want to?) organize the work at the required level, cut down on the extras, refused to draw the necessary signs, emphasized in every possible way who was the boss in the house. Ryazanov even had to declare a boycott and threaten absenteeism from work.
Italian actors also behaved as they wanted. Sometimes it was difficult to cope with the assigned tasks. Sometimes they were cowardly when it was necessary to perform some difficult trick. And in some scenes, the text was scribbled so non-stop that the actress Olga Aroseva, who played the mother of the protagonist, could not insert her line. As a result, the actress had to resort to extreme measures: she plugged the throat of one of the Italian partners with a towel and only then managed to utter her words.
But still, our artists were not all that bad. Our (and in the picture there are three of them - Andrey Mironov, Olga Aroseva and Evgeny Evstigneev) got a rare opportunity to spend time in Italy for free. Capstrana, and what a! At that time, the sweet dream of a Soviet person. Evstigneev, who played the colorful Lame in The Italians, also brought his second wife, Lilia Zhurkina, to Rome.

For example, Andrei Mironov had two shooting days, and he spent three weeks in Italy and answered the telephone questions of his then wife Ekaterina Gradova: “What are you doing there, because you have already filmed?” - Mironov answered specifically and cheerfully: “Stupid! I live here!"
Andrei Mironov very rarely used the services of understudies and stuntmen, and insisted on doing all the stunts himself. For example, in the episode when his hero climbed an 11-meter ladder, which was on a fire truck moving at a speed of 60 km per hour. The actor got out of the cab, climbed onto the stairs, made his way on all fours to its end, slid down onto the roof of the Zhiguli driving under the stairs and climbed into the cabin.
Even for an experienced stuntman, this was a difficult trick. Mironov descended from the window of the sixth floor of the Astoria Hotel, holding on to the carpet with his hands, hung over the Neva, grabbing the edges of a raised bridge at the height of a twenty-story building, and below him a steamer sailed under him. In one of the episodes, the lion King got up on his hind legs and scratched the back of an Italian actor. And Mironov played three doubles with the beast.

To be honest, this film is based on Mironov, it is around him that the slender Olga (Antonia Santilli) dances around him, giving the audience a couple of scenes on the verge of a striptease, but on the whole playing a big and pure love with the character of Mironov, a funny mafioso performed by Tano Cimarosa, an absurd couple of Italian relatives and other characters.
Mironov not only miraculously played his role, Once again giving the audience an alloy of charm, fun and grace (his first appearance, when he drives up the gangway to the plane, is extremely effective), but also showed miracles of acting courage. The courage of the pilots from Ulyanovsk, who landed the plane directly on the highway, and even without the permission of their superiors, is quite understandable. Pilots are, by definition, brave people, and even Ryazanov teased them: “What, weak?” - that's what they released.
But when an artist, an intellectual, a representative of a purely peaceful profession hung, clinging to the edge of the raised bridge, and silently performed other tricks - it was something. Mironov himself went down the carpet path from the sixth floor of the Astoria Hotel in Leningrad (in which, by the way, he always stayed when he came to Leningrad). The scene in which Captain Vasiliev swam under water, diving under water for jewelry, was filmed in Naples, and therefore Andrei Mironov sank to the bottom of the warm Mediterranean Sea, and not the cold Neva.

And his direct communication with the lion King, who had already demonstrated his not very friendly disposition before, became a legend at all, having received the classification of a modest acting feat.
The future actress Maria Mironova was born during the filming of "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia." Andrey Mironov was at that time in Leningrad. According to the memoirs of Eldar Ryazanov, when Mironov was informed of the birth of his daughter, he had dinner at the Sadko restaurant of the Evropeiskaya hotel. From happiness, the young father then almost ate Yevgeny Evstigneev's fake plastered leg.
Russian "troika"
In those years, this comedy hosted a “presentation” of the latest Zhiguli model, the VAZ-2103. "Troika", or "treshka", in 1974 was the most expensive and prestigious passenger car of a small class of the domestic auto industry. Having barely appeared on the movie screen, the VAZ-2103 became a dream car for tens of millions of Soviet people.

But then the producer of the picture appeared and said that Italian Sergio Mioni would perform all the tricks. Arriving in Moscow, he wrote a whole list of props he needed. Were in this list and seat belts. What it is, few people in the USSR then imagined. The assistant director of the picture ran and brought him a fire hose: "Let's grab it with two bolts to the body - and order." Hearing this, Mioni fainted. Then they sent him real belts from Italy.
In the distant 70s in our country, in the process of filming, only decommissioned cars were allowed to be beaten. This rule did not apply to the Italians, so while working on the "Incredible Adventures" of the five brand new Zhiguli, they shattered as many as three pieces. However, the game was worth the candle. After the comedy was released in foreign film distribution, it made an excellent advertisement for the Volga Automobile Plant, whose products were just beginning to be acquired by Western countries ...
Continuing the car-water theme, it is worth recalling the episode in which the Moskvich-412 manufactured by AZLK (it differed from the Izhevsk counterpart only in the shape of headlights and radiator lining) forces a water barrier along the bottom of a reservoir. It was at this moment that a phrase was uttered that caused a frenzied burst of laughter in the cinema halls - an Italian sitting in the passenger seat asks the driver: “Be careful, you will crush the fish!” ...

But the scenes with the lion turned out better with Russian actors.
With an actor named King - a lion who grew up in the apartment of a Baku architect - the relationship also did not work out. Training and home education are not the same thing.
The wayward beast did not care about the tight shooting schedule, the budget, the Soviet-Italian relations - he ignored the script and did only what he wanted. He did not want to jump out the window of the nesting dolls warehouse - and the group dutifully waited for three nights. On the fourth, King became interested in something inside the warehouse, and he jumped.
Leo King was a pet - he lived in the Berberov family, who became famous throughout the country for their apartment menagerie. King needed a whole refrigerator of food for lunch: a few kilograms of meat, eggs, fish oil. The Berberovs' salary was small, and it was very difficult to feed a huge adult lion. So they accepted filming offers.

- When filming Lion King, his owner, after reading the script, said, “The script is very bad. It does not take into account even a hundredth of the capabilities of my King. And King can do anything! After that, the script was replenished with new episodes and stunts. However, in reality it turned out that the lion is lazy, refused to do many tricks the first time.
It also turned out that the actors are terribly afraid of the lion, Mironov was the first to contact King, captivating the rest with his courage. After that, Ryazanov promised himself never to be an animal director again.
Work in "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia" was the star and the last hour for King. As a temporary living space for the period of filming in Leningrad, the whole school was given to the family. At one point, the lion was left unattended in the school gym for several minutes. King became interested in an onlooker in the school garden.

According to eyewitnesses, the guy began to make faces and jump, turning either face or back to the lion. For King, it was a call to play: the assistant rehearsed with him the episode for "Italians" when the lion runs after the man and knocks him to the ground. He stood on his hind legs, squeezed out the glass in the window, ran up to the guy and knocked him to the ground.
The girl who was waiting for him at the fence shouted: “Help, the lion is tearing a man!”. Militia lieutenant Gurov was returning from a lunch break. He heard screams, ran up to the fence, without understanding what was happening, shot at King. The lion immediately moved away from the guy towards the broken window. But Gurov unloaded the entire clip into King.
By the way, subsequently, the lieutenant did dizzying career and became a general and chairman of the State Duma committee on security. After the death of King, Sergey Obraztsov and Yuri Yakovlev presented the Berberovs with a second lion, which was also named King. It was he who, a few years later, became the cause of the tragedy - he killed the son of his owners and wounded the mistress. After The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia, Eldar Ryazanov swore off taking pictures of animals.

- During the filming of the crazy passage of the ambulance along the sidewalk between the tables of the cafe, one of the extras was so frightened that he fell from shock.
— All breaking glass (porthole in the plane, the window of the nesting dolls warehouse) was created by italian master special effects Giulio Molinari, iced Mafioso is also his work.
- The scene with the Tu-134 landing was filmed at the Ulyanovsk airfield, at the school of civil aviation pilots, the runway was “made up” under the highway. The deputy head of the school, Ivan Antonovich Tarashchan, suggested: "Take a letter from the Ministry of Civil Aviation, in which they will allow me to fly in violation of the instructions, and I will do the trick."
However, the Ministry of Civil Aviation responded with a categorical refusal. Then the pilot Tarashchan demanded: "Cars - only cars, driving - only pilots: in this emergency it will be easier for them to navigate instantly and accurately." In total, the plane landed 6 times and each time flawlessly. The shots where the Tu-134 is driving along the highway, and cars scurrying under it, were filmed on the reserve lane. In some shots of the plane landing scene, uncamouflaged airport radar equipment is visible.

— Most of the stunts in the car chase were performed by Italian stunt driver Sergio Mioni. The episode when "Moskvich" and "Zhiguli" fall under a jet of water and mud, become "blind" and rush about, chasing each other, was performed by Soviet racers, they also carried out the entire driver's part of the act with a fire engine. By the way, leaving the Moskvich washed out from under the jets of water, the broken right headlight turned out to be restored a little earlier
— During all car stunts, cars show miracles of regeneration: when the heroes get into Moskvich on a trailer, the bumper is already bent and the feed is raised, there is also no rear window; in the scene where the Muscovite is catching up with the Zhiguli, the first car is intact, and the dents are already visible on the second, after a strong blow to the rear, the Zhiguli flies over the river with a slightly dented rear bumper.
And in the scene when the Moskvich is driving down the slope on the roof, it is clear that there is no engine or transmission on the car, and the wheels are welded to pipes instead of bridges, so when the Zhiguli “throws” the Moskvich from the roof, the latter does not work at all

- During the filming of the gas station explosion, artist Mikhail Bogdanov erected a gas station that was no different from its prototypes, as a result, many cars drove up to refuel.
— In the stunt with a divorced bridge, the only scene in the film with the participation of understudies (Ninetto Davoli (Giuseppe) jumped by himself, without an understudy), in the episode where the steamer sails under the bridge (they filmed the steamer Taras Shevchenko, whose cabin was increased by 2.5 meters) students of the circus school participated.
To give the viewer the impression that the trick was performed by the artists, their close-ups were needed. Mironov was persuaded, and he hung over the river on the rearing wing of the bridge, the height of which was approximately 15 storey building. Below, the Neva was splashing, a motor ship was sailing under Mironov. Mironov struggled to climb the bridge for real. Filmed the entire episode in one day.

- According to the script, the Italians do not speak Russian. However, in the scene in the garden where they count the steps from the fountain, one of them approached the boy and asked to borrow a shovel, and both understood each other.
While filming an ambulance driving down the sidewalk between cafe tables in Rome, one of the extras was so frightened that he fell from shock
Mistakes in the movie
During all car stunts, cars show miracles of regeneration: when the heroes get into the Moskvich on a trailer, the bumper is already bent and the rear is raised, there is also no rear window; in the scene where the Moskvich is catching up with the Zhiguli, the first car is intact, and dents are already visible on the second.
After a strong blow to the rear, the Zhiguli flies over the river with a slightly dented rear bumper. And in the scene when the Moskvich is driving down the slope on the roof, it is clear that there is no engine or transmission on the car, and the wheels are welded to pipes instead of bridges, so when the Zhiguli “throws” the Moskvich from the roof, the latter does not work at all suspension.

When Giuseppe, hanging from the lighting mast on Vosstaniya Square, was talking to Andrey, behind him the time was either 15:45 or 16:00.
The heroes of the film leave the airport, getting into a brown Volga with license plate number 67-37, and get out of a black Volga with number 62-80.
The film "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia" - light, dynamic and not particularly pretending to anything - did not gain fame in the foreign box office (de Laurentiis, they say, regretted that he did not take foreign stars in the picture), but in our country it was watched with pleasure. Eldar Ryazanov did not consider him his luck. And in vain, this picture is much stronger than many of his highly controversial paintings of the last period. So in this case, the audience knows better - they have always been supportive of the "Italians".

http://fishki.net/1315869-istorija-created...

50 million people watched the joint Soviet-Italian adventure comedy in the first year of its release in the USSR. The audience laughed at The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia, but the director almost cried.

Russian spaghetti

The picture was released on the screen in April 1974, and Eldar Ryazanov and Emil Braginsky filed a script application for Spaghetti in Russian back in 1970. They outlined the plot of the film briefly and succinctly: a comedy about Italian adventurers hunting for Russian treasure, who are opposed by positive hero in the form of a Soviet policeman. The film committee criticized the material and forced everything to be redone. This concerned rogue foreigners, from whom it was required to mold not so blamed persons. The authors of the buffoonery considered the wish a mockery and refused to be led by the critics. And more than once Eldar Ryazanov will declare later that he will not shoot the proposed nonsense, and he feels sorry for the director who will undertake it. He even tried to shake off the project to Leonid Gaidai - perhaps it would be easier for a recognized master of eccentrics to cope with the task? But Gaidai was going to start with "Ivan Vasilyevich ..." and did not get involved in other people's affairs. And the management of Goskino insisted on participating in the filming of Ryazanov's comedy.

The “carrot” for the director was the opportunity to work abroad, and the “stick” was submission to a foreign producer. After Sergey Bondarchuk's film "Waterloo", the Italian company "Dino de Laurentiis" remained indebted to Mosfilm and could pay off with a new joint production. And in order for the picture to become a box office, taking into account the tastes of a foreign audience, it must have a lot of drive and eccentric humor such as “faces in the cake”. From the original script, only a living lion was allowed to be kept. "Spaghetti in Russian" was first renamed "Italians in Russia", and then - "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia". We agreed to shoot a stunt film with chases, risky scenes, nesting dolls, GUM, a drawbridge, white night and other sights of Moscow and Leningrad.

A big difference

While we welcomed the Italian guests on a Russian scale (even the Kazan Cathedral in Leningrad was specially restored), foreign partners were in no hurry to reciprocate. The Italians tried to save on everything, including actors. An Italian producer was also responsible for their selection, which was unusual for Eldar Ryazanov, who was used to managing the situation. One of the proposed candidates for the role, as it turned out, was sitting behind bars at the time for tax evasion. The director wanted to invite Vittorio Gassman to the picture, but Laurentiis picked up cheaper shots. Subsequently, he will regret that he did not invite the stars to the film, because in Italy the comedy did not cause much resonance. The Italians let down film crew and with costumes. It would seem, who better to pick up modern clothes for heroes, if not trendsetters in Milan and Rome? But such rags were sent to Moscow that Ryazanov, who lost his temper, asked that Mosfilm not be considered a junk shop. On filming in Italy, our filmmakers were placed in third-rate hotels, the extras were reduced and the necessary signs were not made. I even had to shoot on the streets from under the floor, because the permission to professional photography. Ryazanov went on strike and was ready to boycott the film if conditions were not created for normal work. But our not spoiled Western way of life the actors were inspired by the very possibility of spending time abroad. For example, Andrey Mironov filmed for only a couple of days (he dived not into icy waters Neva, but into the gentle Mediterranean Sea), but did not leave Italy for three weeks. The then-wife of the actor Ekaterina Gradova (Kat from the series about Stirlitz) cut off the phone, finding out what her precious hubby was doing there. To which Mironov joyfully replied: “That’s dumb - I live here!”. The actress had no reason for suspicion: the company of Andrei Mironov was Olga Aroseva (a colleague at the Theater of Satire, who played the mother of the hero in the film) and the performer of the role of Lame Yevgeny Evstigneev with his second wife Lilia Zhurkina.

Crazy Race

In the Italian version, the comedy was called "One Mad, Mad, Mad Race in Russia" ("Una matta, matta, matta corsa in Russia"), which was a reference to the parodied film "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World". In various stunt episodes soviet painting parodies other adventure films of those years: The Rat Race, The Sicilian Clan (from there Eldar Ryazanov borrowed the scene of the plane landing on a busy highway) and Zabriskie Point (the gas station explosion was copied from Michelangelo Antonioni's gangster tape). The crazy race was both in the frame and behind the scenes - such a pace of shooting in the Soviet Union was not yet known. The members of the film crew shattered the Western idea of the slowness of Soviet film production - in fact, Ryazanov proved the opposite. Usually, it took several months to prepare one trick, but here all the tricks were staged in 31 days! And in two months, starting on May 14, 1973, 90 percent of the film was ready. Ryazanov himself was surprised: for the first time he had to shoot at such a speed. The film crew was given one day off to rest, on the remaining six days of the week the shooting was carried out almost around the clock, in two shifts. Even expressive Italians howled from such a busy schedule, but our actors did not grumble. Italian actors also refused complex stunts (only Giuseppe - Ninetto Davoli jumped from the bridge into the river without an understudy), and Soviet colleagues did everything in their power.

In particular, Andrei Mironov, who played a policeman, was eager to work without stuntmen. When the lion frightened the Italian actor to the point of fainting, rising on hind legs and having scratched his back, Mironov was not afraid to play three doubles with the beast. An artist without an understudy made his way out of the cab of a moving fire truck climbed the stairs, squatted over 11 meters, jumped onto a passenger car driving under the stairs and climbed from the roof into its interior. Mironov jumped, hanging on the carpet, from the window of the sixth floor of the Astoria Hotel in Leningrad, in which he always stopped when visiting northern capital. And he also swam under water in Naples and hung at the height of a 16-story building above the Neva - on the edges of a divorced bridge, above a motor ship sailing below. No wonder after this role the actor became the Honored Artist of the RSFSR.

Smile, stuntmen!

The producer insisted that all car stunts be performed by Italian stuntman Sergio Mioni. Upon arrival in Moscow, he compiled a list of required props. Seeing seat belts on this list, the assistant director got hold of ... a fire hose. Well, there was no such tradition in the Soviet automobile industry - to fasten seat belts to the seats. “Now we’ll fasten it with two bolts and we’ll go,” the dead man said about the fire hose. The foreign stuntman realized that in this country every driver is a stuntman. But the belts were still delivered to him - from abroad. Another discovery of the Italian race car driver was what kind of "killed" cars their happy owners drove with us. The car was a luxury, not a means of transportation, so it was used to the last opportunity. And, of course, new cars were not beaten in the movies - stuntmen had only decommissioned "tin cans" for tricks.

An exception was made for the Italians: for each trick they brought five brand new Zhigulis of the third model and Moskvich-412s. It was the Moskvich that forced the water obstacle along the bottom in the film, when the Italian passenger asked the driver to be careful not to crush the fish. And the VAZ-2103 was considered almost a foreign car in the Union: the export car was different high quality assembly and imported components purchased for foreign currency in Hungary and Italy. The car had a powerful engine, chrome trim and such new parts for Soviet cars as headrests, armrests and a tachometer. In the 70s it was our most expensive and prestigious passenger car in the small class. Actually, the film became its presentation, and three out of five cars broken during filming were an adequate price for advertising the products of the Volga Automobile Plant in the Western market. But few people know that our cars in the film also had doubles. In a number of scenes, the Moskvich with the Italians turned into their native FIAT-1100, and the Zhiguli, on which Olga was driving, into the FIAT-124. Almost all of the shooting in the salon was done in FIAT. By the way, the car stunts in the film were edited with errors. For example, "Moskvich" falls under a stream of water with a broken headlight, and leaves after the "shower" with a whole one. In the episode, when the Moskvich overtakes the Zhiguli, and the second car flies over the river from the rear impact, the VAZ has dents even before the collision, and after the impact, the rear bumper is only slightly dented. And how do you like the “Moskvich” that has not yet “sniffed gunpowder” on a trailer, in which the feed is already raised, the bumper is damaged and the rear window is broken out? No less amusing is the scene of the Moskvich driving on the roof of the VAZ: there are no bridges on the wheels, they are simply soldered to the pipes, so after dropping from the Zhiguli, the Moskvich’s suspension does not react - it is clear that the car has no engine and transmission .

Aerobatics

By the way, the chase with the participation of "Moskvich" and "VAZ" with mud-splattered windshields, as well as the entire driver's attraction in a fire truck, was performed by domestic racing drivers. They were not allowed only to the scene of landing a passenger liner on a road crowded with cars. In fact, the huge Tu-134 landed not on the highway, but on the runway of the Ulyanovsk airfield, “made up” as a freeway, where future civil aviation pilots practiced. When the ministry did not allow their mentor Ivan Tarashchan to perform a stunt that violated the instructions, he decided to land the plane without the participation of stunt racers. WITH emergency only aviators will cope, the deputy chief explained flight school and ordered his pilots to get behind the wheel of cars. The plane landed on the reserve runway of the airport (it is given out by radars caught in the frame), and the same pilots were sitting in the cars as they were at the helm of the Tu-134. As a result, each of the six takes was worked out flawlessly.

The artist of the film Mikhail Bogdanov also turned out to be at the wheel to match the professionals: for the scene of the explosion of a gas station, he made such a plausible dummy of a gas station that passing cars drove up to it for fuel.

The last tour of the King

One of the main characters of the picture can rightfully be considered the king of animals - the lion King. Essentially, this dangerous predator was a domestic "cat": since childhood he lived with people - he grew up in the house of the architect Lev Lvovich and Nina Berberov in Baku. He was born in the Baku Zoo and was stunted and sickly. His mother either abandoned him or died, so they decided to put him to sleep. Nina Petrovna decided to save him and took him home.

Every day, King ate half a refrigerator: a can of fish oil, a dozen eggs and several kilograms of meat. Therefore, filming a movie has become a great chance for a lion to earn money for food. “Your script does not reveal even a hundredth part of its capabilities,” the owner of the beast assured the director. “Our King can do everything.” But it's one thing to perform with a practiced number, and another to work on a trick in the frame. It required a lot of takes, as little came out the first time. The lion was distracted, slowed down, or simply did not understand what they wanted from him. King was a pet and not used to circus work. He could make the film crew wait three nights for his mood to jump into the window of the nesting dolls warehouse. Schedule, regulations, budget - what animal cares about the director's problems? And Eldar Ryazanov, after this experience, vowed to at least once again involve animals in the filming.

Alas, star role in "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia" was the last for King. During the filming, he was given a school gym as a temporary shelter. This is where the differences in the versions of what happened begin. According to one of them, seeing a lion in the window, one of the onlookers in the school yard began to tease the beast. He jumped and twirled and grimaced, which King regarded as an invitation to play. Indeed, on the set, this is how the lion was encouraged to the stage when he catches up with a man and knocks him down. King squeezed out window glass, jumped up to the onlooker and laid him on the ground. On cries for help, a policeman who happened to be passing by ran up and began to shoot at the predator. King retreated to the window, from which he jumped to his misfortune, but the bullets caught up with him. According to another version, the guy who became a victim of the attack did not tease the lion, but only climbed over the school fence for his dog, and the lion left unattended jumped out the open window and attacked him ... Following the death of King, the tragedy overtook his owners. To heal the wound of loss, Yuri Yakovlev and Sergei Obraztsov gave the Berberovs a new lion, which they named in memory of their lost predecessor, King II. And a few years later, a new member of the family took the life of the son of the owners, crippled the hostess and shared the fate of his predecessor ...

In the episode with Giuseppe hanging on a pole, the clock behind the hero's back jumps from 15.45 to 16.00 and back.
The heroes of the comedy leave the airport in an eggplant-colored Volga with the number 67-37, and arrive in an anthracite Volga with a license plate number 62-80.
When between the tables of an Italian cafe at breakneck speed passes " ambulance”, one of the extras fainted from fright during the shooting.
According to the script, the Italians cannot explain themselves in Russian, but there is an episode in the film when one of them asks our child to give him a spatula, and the boy understands the foreigner.
The heiress of the treasure Olga (Antonia Santilli) speaks in the voice of Natalia Gurzo, the orderly Giuseppe (Ninetto Davoli) is voiced by Mikhail Kononov, the orderly Antonio Lomazzo (Alighiero Noschese) is Alexander Belyavsky, the mafia Rosario Agro (Tano Cimarosa) is Mikhail Gluzsky, and the doctor without a passport (Luigi Ballista) - Yakov Belenky.
Antonio Lomazzo's wife Marisa is played by an uncredited Rimma Markova.
The composer of the film was Carlo Rustikelli, and Muslim Magomayev performed the song. The co-authors of the script from the Italian side are Giuseppe Pipolo and Franco Castellano.

The domestic audience is well aware of Eldar Ryazanov's film "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia". However, not everyone knows that a real drama broke out during the filming of the legendary comedy, and for some people involved in the film, it turned into a tragedy at all.

It all started with a conflict between Lenfilm and its Italian film production partners. Back in 1970, foreign colleagues and domestic filmmakers worked together on the film "Waterloo". The Italians owe the Leningrad film studio a large sum. Soviet filmmakers did not fail to take advantage of the moment and offered to pay off the debt to put the tape on the script by Eldar Ryazanov and Emil Braginsky. But the Italians rejected the text. Temperamental colleagues from the southern country longed for more action and dynamics.

The Soviet co-authors had no choice but to start inventing tricks and vivid scenes. The landing of the plane on the highway, the jump during the opening of the bridge and the risky scenes with the lion - now the foreign colleagues were satisfied. However, Eldar Ryazanov, after reading new version the script is confusing. “I feel sorry for the director who will shoot it,” the maestro made a gloomy conclusion.

So the adventure comedy was born, which fell in love with millions of viewers. The world premiere of the film took place on January 31, 1974.

One of the main roles in the film was played by the city on the Neva. According to the script of the film, it was here that a Russian emigrant buried treasures worth nine billion Italian lire even before the revolution. Before her death, she managed to tell her granddaughter that the jewels were hidden in Leningrad, under a lion, of which there are a great many in Northern Venice in the form of statues and bas-reliefs. It is here that tireless adventurers from Italy rush to find the treasured treasure.

The appearance of Eldar Ryazanov in the episodes became the director's signature style, a kind of quality mark with which he marked his films. In The Italians, the maestro plays the role of a doctor, calmly wielding a chisel and a hammer in order to rescue the mafia Rosario from ice captivity. An Italian treasure-hunting crook's rivals left him as a running gag when he smashed a plane window and ended up half overboard.

The main role of the captain, and then the police major under cover of Andrei Vasiliev, was played by the brilliant Andrei Mironov. The favorite of the public almost never resorted to the services of stuntmen, independently doing all the complex and dangerous stunts. "Italians in Russia" was no exception. It is Mironov who hangs over the Neva, holding on to the edge of the raised bridge, descends from the window of the sixth floor of the Astoria, grabbing the carpet, and slides down from the extended ladder of the fire truck onto the roof of the Zhiguli at a speed of sixty kilometers per hour.

Andrei Mironov said that between Italian and Soviet actors on film set there was something like a competition. Neither one nor the other wanted to lose face, and therefore sought to perform all the tricks on their own.

Charming Olga - the granddaughter of a Russian emigrant - was played by Antonia Santili. Eldar Ryazanov could not resist the beauty Italian actress and included in the film a scene of naked Olga in the shower. The filmmakers were very worried about whether the censors would miss the piquant episode. Fortunately, everything worked out, and the Italian actress appeared in the frame without clothes.

By the time of filming with Eldar Ryazanov, Antonia Santili managed to play roles in eleven films. And this is just two years of film career. It is curious that the artist chose to play in "The Italians", rejecting the offer to star in crime drama Serpico with Al Pacino leading role. However, the role of Olga was the last for the Italian actress. She got married and began to lead a closed lifestyle.

The life of Alighiero Noskose, who played the role of the silly orderly Antonio, was much more dramatic. At home, he gained popularity, brilliantly parodying stars and politicians. He skillfully used the talent of a mockingbird in political activity helping Masonic Lodge"P-2" to prepare a coup d'état in Italy. The artist called public figures and spoke to them with the voices of politicians. The conspirators did not succeed, and the actor himself, five years after filming in The Italians, ended up in a clinic with a deep depression and soon died.

It would seem that "The Italians" is a light comedy, designed to entertain the viewer with the misadventures of Italian adventurers in Russia. However, the tape not only amuses the viewer, but also engages in a dialogue with world cinema, sometimes parodying, sometimes playing with fragments from best films that time. For example, in the scene of the gas station explosion, Eldar Ryazanov makes fun of the cult film Zabriskie Point by Michelangelo Antonioni. The film that became the anthem of the protest youth of the 70s.

By the way, the gas station in the movie is fake. This is a layout. But the scenery was made so skillfully that Soviet motorists stopped by to refuel.

As planned by the scriptwriters of The Italians, one of the main characters in the film was to be a real lion. Just at that time, the Berberov family from Baku became widely known in the USSR, keeping a living lion in their apartment. The royal animal was distinguished by a good disposition and did not show aggression towards humans. Therefore, the creators of the comedy turned to the fearless owners to let their pet play one of the key roles in The Incredible Adventures of the Italians. Moreover, the beast already had cinematic experience.

The lion was brought to Leningrad a month before the start of filming. He needed acclimatization. The animal turned out to be wayward and categorically refused to follow the director's instructions. One scene with a lion could take four days of shooting. Ryazanov was so outraged by this that he subsequently stopped shooting four-legged artists in his paintings.

It was not easy for the actors either. No wonder. A few years later, Ninetto Davoli, who played the eccentric orderly Giuseppe in the film, showed scars all over his back left by a four-legged colleague on the set.

For the famous lion throughout the country, the role in "Italians" was the last. He was taken to Moscow, where he was left on the territory closed school. On July 25, 1973, student Valentin Markov passed by with a girl. The couple was with a dog. Suddenly, the animal escaped and ended up on the school grounds. The unsuspecting student jumped over the fence to catch up with the dog. Here the lion attacked young man. He knocked down the guy with a swoop and began to roll on the ground, and then stuck the head of the unfortunate man into his mouth. The girl screamed. Policeman Gurov responded to the cries. He immediately drew a pistol from its holster and fired the entire clip into the animal. The lion died on the spot. Student Markov was seriously injured.

A second lion was brought into the Berberov family. On November 24, 1980, he attacked the owner, Nina Berberova, and then her 14-year-old son. The boy will die.

The viewer probably remembered the spectacular scene with the Tu-134 landing on the highway. In fact, the shooting took place on the runway at the airfield in Ulyanovsk. It's just that the filmmakers skillfully disguised the air harbor as a highway. The plane landed six times. Yes, so that each double could well enter into final version movie.

The film ends with an IL-62 soaring into the sky to the accompaniment of the song "Amore vieni". The composition is performed by Muslim Magomayev, but for some reason they forgot to indicate the brilliant singer in the credits of the film.