Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures

Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures

Film poster
Directed by Leonid Gaidai
Written by Moris Slobodskoy
Yakov Kostyukovsky
Leonid Gaidai
Starring Aleksandr Demyanenko
Aleksey Smirnov
Natalya Seleznyova
Yuri Nikulin
Georgy Vitsin
Yevgeny Morgunov
Music by Aleksandr Zatsepin
Cinematography Konstantin Brovin
Edited by Valentina Yankovskaya
Distributed by Mosfilm
Release dates
  • 16 August 1965 (1965-08-16)
Running time
 90 min.
Country Soviet Union
Language Russian

Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures (Russian: Операция „Ы“ и другие приключения Шурика) - (Operatsiya „Y“ i drugie priklyucheniya Shurika) is a 1965 Soviet slapstick comedy film directed by Leonid Gaidai, starring Aleksandr Demyanenko, Natalya Seleznyova, Yuri Nikulin, Georgy Vitsin and Yevgeny Morgunov. The film consists of three independent parts: "Workmate" (Напарник, Naparnik), "Déjà vu" (Наваждение, Navazhdeniye) and "Operation Y"[1] (Операция „Ы“).[2][3] The plot follows the adventures of Shurik (alternative spelling — Shourick), the naive and nerdy Soviet student who often gets into ludicrous situations but always finds a way out very neatly.

Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures was a hit movie and became the leader of Soviet film distribution in 1965.[2]

Cast

Segment "Workmate"

Segment "Déjà vu"

Segment "Operation Y"

Plot

Segment "Workmate"

On a bus a boor and drunkard named Fedya takes a seat reserved for children and disabled persons and then refuses to let a young pregnant woman sit claiming that "she is neither a child nor handicapped". Shurik, who is riding on the same bus, puts on a pair of sunglasses, and pretends to be visually impaired. When Fedya is urged to let him sit in his seat, Shurik offers the seat to the pregnant woman. Fedya is enraged at being deceived and gets into a fight with Shurik. As a result, Fedya is arrested and sentenced to 15 days of Community service, Russian administrative arrest or simply '15 sutok' (15 days). Ironically, he is sent to serve his term to the same construction site where Shurik works part-time. The manager puts them on the same work crew. Fedya does not do his work properly, bullies Shurik, and plans to get revenge on the young student. When Shurik finally hits back, the two get involved in a Tom and Jerry-style chase throughout the construction site using building equipment and various materials as weapons. In the end Fedya is subdued and reeducated by Shurik.

Features

Segment "Déjà vu"

It's time for summer examinations at the University, and everyone is cramming for the exams. Shurik (and everyone else) is looking desperately for lecture notes and finally sees them in the hands of a girl on a streetcar, Lida, who is a student of the same University. As Shurik follows her reading the notebook over her shoulder, they become so deeply absorbed in reading the notes that Lida never looks up, instinctively assuming that Shurik is one of her female coeds. The two are completely engrossed in reading and never look at or speak to each other, following a sort of humorous pantomime.

They come into the girl's apartment and spend time there reading simultaneously with having a snack and resting, with the girl taking her clothes off, still completely unaware of each other's identity, then prepare to go back to the University. There Shurik is distracted from Lida's notebook by a fellow student and loses her as she walks in another direction. After passing the exam successfully, he is introduced to Lida by a mutual friend. Shurik does not recognize Lida but is enchanted by her. He walks her back home and, following an amusing incident involving a dog belonging to Lida's neighbors, finds himself in her apartment again, where he starts to feel as if he has been there before since he can guess where all the things are placed and all the "objects, scents and sounds" seem familiar to him. Lida assumes that he might be a telepathist and has an ability of precognition. She tells him to guess her wish that she has written on a piece of paper, "Find the teddy bear". Shurik then kisses her. Although he failed to guess the wish, the kiss evokes romantic feelings in both of them, and they decide to meet again after the next exam.

Meanwhile, another student tries to cheat his way through his Physics exam by using a concealed radio to communicate with another student, but has to dress up to an absurd degree to hide his crude equipment and attracts the examiner's attention by using radio jargon, but he seems to get away with it. However, the examiner promptly reveals a proper radio intercept suite in his bag, listens to the cheater call him a fool, and then activates a radio jammer before approaching the offender and blowing his cover. They both laugh at the disguise, and the student gets 5 (excellent) for his design (it is a technical faculty) and a 2 (fail) for the exam.

Segment "Operation Y"

A warehouse manager, trying to cover up his theft, hires three petty criminals nicknamed Fool (Балбес), Coward (Трус) and Pro (Бывалый) to stage a break-in. Their elaborate plan goes wrong when Shurik is asked by his landlady, an elderly woman nicknamed Baboushka (Grandma) who usually guards the warehouse, to babysit her granddaughter during her shift, and once that proves to be too much for him, to replace her while she takes care of the child. Surprised, Coward fails to neutralize the guard using a handkerchief soaked in chloroform as planned, putting himself to sleep instead. The culmination of the story is the "Warehouse Battle", involving Shurik and the criminals using various impromptu weapons such as musical instruments and rapiers. The segment ends as an agitated Baboushka arrives at the warehouse and finds Shurik and the trio lying on a floor asleep — Coward having fainted earlier on, Fool and Pro having been "rendered harmless" by Shurik, and Shurik himself having fallen asleep after accidentally wiping his face with the chloroform soaked handkerchief.

Production

Reception

The film was enormously popular; it became the leader of Soviet film distribution in 1965 having 69.6 million viewers. The novel Déjà vu, based on a story from a Polish magazine,[4] won the Grand Prix Wawel Silver Dragon at the Kraków Film Festival in Poland in 1965.[2]

The film became a fount of quotes for Soviet/Russian people.

In spring 2012 a monument to Lida and Shurik reading the class notes over her shoulder was installed in front of the Kuban State Technological University, Krasnodar.[5]

Video release

At the end of the 1970s and the 1980s, the film was released on VHS as part of the series "Video Program of Goskino USSR". Starting in 1990, the film was released on VHS by the film association "Large Scale" (Krupniy plan) with Hi-Fi Stereo sound and encoded in PAL. Starting in 2001, Large Scale began fully restored releases of the film on DVD with enhanced video and sound quality using Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Mono and incorporating subtitles.

Notes

Pro (Yevgeni Morgunov) turns 180° the S-3A car effortlessly with his shoulder.

References

Notes
  1. ↑ The letter "Y" in the title of the film is in fact Yery (Cyrillic: Ы, pronounced roughly as the vowel sound in the word "nib"), Operatsiya „Y“, this codename sounds bizarre because no native Russian word starts with this letter. As Fool (Yu. Nikulin) answers to the "Why 'Y'?" question — "So that nobody would guess why!" The phrase became a common colloquialism in Russian used to answer odd questions.
  2. 1 2 3 Операция "Ы" и другие приключения Шурика (in Russian). KinoExpert.ru. Retrieved 2010-06-12.
  3. ↑ Операция "Ы" и другие приключения Шурика (1965) (in Russian). Archived from the original on January 5, 2010. Retrieved 2010-06-12.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 ""Simply Shurik". One of the most popular characters of the Soviet Cinema came into the world 40 years ago". Vechernyaya Moskva (in Russian). Retrieved 2008-02-05.
  5. ↑ Мученики науки: 9 самых выразительных памятников студентам в России
  6. ↑ Семь стариков и одна девушка (1968) at the Internet Movie Database
  7. ↑ Radios in Movies (russian)
  8. ↑ Dzintars
Bibliography
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