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A former aristocrat leads a miserable life in the Soviet Russia of 1927 until his mother-in-law reveals a secret to him. She sewed the family jewels into one of a set of dining room chairs which were sold and dispersed throughout the country. In cooperation with Ostap Bender, a resourceful con-man, he travels far and wide in search of the lost fortune.
Director Leonid Gaidai uses the treasure hunt plot as an opportunity to poke fun at post-revolutionary Russia during its first decade. Heroic honors given to civilian workers such as medals for street-cleaning, cramped living quarters where four families share partitioned one bedroom apartments, and extremely flexible writers who customize their verse to fit any public purpose—these are grist for Gaidai's mill. The film moves at great speed using sight gags, cartoon sequences and modern-day allusions to satirize the petit bourgeois remnants that hung on after the Bolshevik Revolution.
Ilya Ilf and Yevgeni Petrov's comic novel has been adapted to the screen at least eight times previously—in Britain, Germany, Sweden, Brazil, Cuba, Italy and twice in Hollywood. The 1954 Swedish version used for the hiding place of the missing treasure seven brassieres instead of a dozen chairs! But, this Soviet Russian film adaptation just may be the best of the bunch... and, it's very hard to find. This film will probably never see the light of domestic VHS and DVD and, rumor has it, the 16mm print we are screening may be pulled from distribution so this could be our one chance to see this classic foreign comedy.
"Tumultuosly funny!" — Vincent Canby, The New York Times
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showtime
Tuesday, June 28 at 7 pm
location
THE GREEN ROOM
144 West Street (across from the Comstock Hotel)
admission
$6 general / $4 GBFS members
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