Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future (1973)

If You have a chance to see the movie - just do it! If You're looking for a way for enabling to see the impossible like too much possible without tricks with computerized effects, for doing great movie with a lot of meanings (needs to know and understand a bit the Socialist Soviet Reality) You can find all of that in that movie. But if You're looking just for fun and nothing more, see the movie and make for Yourself great relaxing evening.

Fmovies: Shurik (a character in several other comedy films) is experimenting at home with an invention which goes wrong and puts him, a passing burglar, and the apartment supervisor back into the time of Ivan the Terrible. There are a lot of chases and action, so you can still enjoy the film even if some of the Russian dialogue passes you by. Good views of several historic buildings, and an insight into 1973 Moscow as well as a bit of a history lesson. Not all Russian films are doom and gloom.

melinda2001, this film does not Benny Hill, you fool! Benny Hill - is silly faces, lust and antics. Ivan Vasilievich - this is a profound satire. Russian do not like the silly faces, lust and antics Benny Hill. Russian need intelligent comedy, satire, allegory different. In this film, the humor in words, as they say in the characters, as they say, and items that you probably did not understand without knowing Russian. And the Russian will always watch this movie. Today in Russia do not remove these movies - it means "Ivan" and other Soviet satirical comedy will be popular. Until new satirical masterpiece comedy . Unfortunately today all over the world to take off stupid, and Russia in this way. New Russians comedy - idiotia as the worst in American comedies. :(

Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future fmovies. This film is not only very funny, but also the product of a deep knowledge and love of classic Russian cinema. Some cadres are clearly inspired by Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible, part I (Ivan Vasilevich looking from the window, Ivan Vasilevich sitting with the scribe) and their presence in the comedy context (in a world turned upside-down, as Bachtin would have it) is the silver bullet that provides laughter and delight to the intellectual as well as to the unsophisticated viewer, who may be content with recognizing on the apartment's wall a reproduction of Repin's "Ivan Grozny killing his own son". Building on this, Gaidai displays his own masterly craft: he can make you laugh with just one word (Tsar Ivan looking at contemporary Moscow - devastated by modern buildings - and bursting out "Beauty!"). Great acting by everyone, Miloslavski (Leonid Kuravliov) being my personal favourite.

Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession is a film capable of appealing to audiences outside the Soviet Union with its universally smart humor. From the onset it is obviously influenced by Western cinema; one cannot tell if Shurik's bedroom is Russian or American until Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov begins playing from the TV. This homogeneous consumer culture is evident all throughout the film, especially in the luxuries of Shpak's apartment, the electronics black market, and the character of Shurik's wife (in the dream plot line). In fact, Shurik's wife in the separate dream world seems almost a caricature of Hollywood with her posters and dreams of falling in love with Yakin and finding fame. Gaidai's camera work utilizes quick photography. This is exemplified in the episode in which Miloslavsky is robbing Shpak's apartment and cannot get out; Gaidai cuts to the many faces of statues and paintings that, in context, are shocked and seem to mock him. This is an amusing riff on the Kuleshov Effect. The sets themselves are also fantastic, and Ivan's (the tsar, not the bureaucrat) palace appears lifted straight out of Eisenstein's 1947 feature. Ivan Vasilievich (both of them), too, is an exact copy of Eisenstein's tsar, pointy beard and all! These visual homages would have been obvious, one assumes, to Russian audiences of the time and surely would have made it all the more comedic. However, Gaidai's humor is not intrinsically Russian, like earlier Soviet comedies, but appeals internationally. The humor lies in the situational: the police/Oprichniki chase, the switching of identities, the mad scientist, even a regal food fight. The only context clues to the time are slight jabs at Soviet rations, the black market, and housing codes. These tropes give the film the ability to transcend the trappings of a fifteen- minute fame, and allow it to be just as funny, if not more, decades later.

Hi!

As the title of the comment points this is one of the best Soviet comedies ever filmed. And that's is the reason for many people from other countries of the world not to get it's meaning. I would say that even modern day Russians - who have never lived in The Soviet Union, who have no idea what Iron Curtain or Warsaw Treaty Organization is will never understand and enjoy it in full. But anyone who is acquainted with Soviet reality will vote 10 of 10 - I am sure. So do not blame Americans or peoples from other countries for not getting Soviet comedies (those were great; and modern day Russian comedies is pure crap - I am sorry) - they were so very oriented to our former reality that are hard to get in modern days. My score is 20 of 10.