| Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures | |||||||
| Native Name: |
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| Director: | Leonid Gaidai | ||||||
| Music: | Aleksandr Zatsepin | ||||||
| Cinematography: | Konstantin Brovin | ||||||
| Editing: | Valentina Yankovskaya | ||||||
| Distributor: | Mosfilm | ||||||
| Runtime: | 94 min | ||||||
| Country: | Soviet Union | ||||||
| Language: | Russian | ||||||
Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures (Russian: link=no|italics=yes|Операция «Ы» и другие приключения Шурика) 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, the naive and nerdy Soviet student who often gets into ludicrous situations, but always finds a way out very neatly.
It was a hit movie and became the leader of Soviet film distribution in 1965.
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). 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 plots 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's whipping him rolled in a wallpaper.
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 fellow students. 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 undressing, 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.
As a subplot, another student, known by his nickname Numskull, tries to cheat his way through his Physics exam with the help of 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 calling him a fool, and then activates a radio jammer before approaching the offender and blowing his cover. They both laugh at the disguise, and Numskull gets a 5 (excellent) for his design (it is an engineering college) and a 2 (failure) for the exam.
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 who usually guards the warehouse, to babysit her granddaughter during her shift. Once that proves to be too much for him, he replaces her as a guard 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. Finally, an agitated woman arrives at the warehouse and finds Shurik and the trio lying on a floor asleepCoward 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. At the end of the segment, Shurik and the woman take the criminals to the police station.
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 source of quotes for Soviet people.[6]
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.[7] In the same year, a sculpture "A student rushing to class" was installed on the steps of the main building of Togliatti State University, the prototype was Shurik from the film.[8] [9] In 2015, a monument to Lida and Shurik sitting on a bench was installed in the frontyard of Ryazan State University.[10] There is a monument to Shurik and Lida in Moscow, at the entrance to the building of the Moscow Economic Institute, Tekstilshchiki District[11]
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 "Close-Up" (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. In 2012, the film was re-released in hardcover format by "Telesem'" magazine.