The eccentric Soviet comedy "The Diamond Arm" boasts a wide geography of filming. The viewer was shown a cruise through the Mediterranean Sea on a snow-white liner, and the narrow streets of a sultry eastern city, and the hometown of the economist Semyon Gorbunkov, who accidentally fell into criminal binding. The filming schedule was as intense as the film was light and sparkling.
Episodes in Moscow and Moscow Region
Filming began on April 25, 1968 at 9 a.m. on Mosfilm. There, in the pavilions, the apartments of the Chief and Count, or Gesha Kozodoev, were created. Later, in the Mosfilm pavilions, they rented the Gorbunkov’s apartment, the cabin of the captain of the ship, the hotel room of the fatal seducer and the restaurant “Weeping Willow”.
There were also field shooting in Moscow. One of them took place on Leninsky Prospekt, opposite the side entrance to the Gorky Park of Culture and Rest. There, on the steps of the underground toilet, Gorbunkov meets a character frightening him with a medallion in the form of a skull on his hairy chest. In the department store on Komsomolsky Prospect, scenes were shot in a thrift store where the beautiful blonde Anna Sergeyevna promises Gorbunkov a robe with mother-of-pearl buttons if he visits her at the hotel. On a vacant lot in Kuntsevo, a scene was shot where the Chef planted trees on a clean-up day and found a tin can with coins, which he himself had hidden there.
The awesome type on the stairs was not at all a professional actor, but Leonid Pleshakov, a journalist for Smena. He was invited to play this role because of his characteristic appearance, and he agreed in exchange for an interview with Yuri Nikulin.
Car scenes were filmed in the Moscow Region - in the Pavlovskaya Sloboda. It was there that the brand new Chef's Moskvich raced through forest lanes, Lelik drove Gorbunkov to a car wash in order to remove gypsum and diamonds from him “without noise and dust, ” chased them on a motorcycle Gesha Kozodoev.
Filming in the Black Sea
Basically, the nameless town, where the main action of the film takes place, was filmed in the resorts of the Black Sea - in Adler and Sochi. On May 17, the film crew relocated to Adler to the Horizont Hotel. They also shot scenes with the ship, which became famous as "Mikhail Svetlov", but in fact was called "Victory". However, Leonid Gaidai loved the work of the poet Mikhail Svetlov so much that he asked to rename the ship for one day. The name was changed even in lifebuoys, and all the scenes on the ship were shot in one day.
After the release of the film on the screens and its sensational success with the public, the first ship launched into the water was called Mikhail Svetlov.
For the main battle with smugglers in the central region of Sochi, a car wash was specially built. After filming the movie, she earned as usual.
Failed fishing on the White Rock was filmed near Tuapse. The sound above the water carried well, so heart-rending cries for the help of the character of Andrei Mironov reached the beach two kilometers from the filming location. Vacationers were alarmed, a boat was sent to save the man. However, as soon as the boat approached the drowning one, there was a terrible roar of the loudspeaker: "Comrades! Get out of the frame! They are shooting!"
City of Diamond Hands
In August, the film crew moved to Baku to shoot an Arab city, where the main character fatally falls at a pharmacy - a smuggler’s shelter. The street near the pharmacy is the old Baku street Malaya Krepostnaya. Here, Yuri Nikulin tried to slip on a banana peel for a long time, but only wasted bananas - rare fruits of those times, which were bought especially for this shot. When the bananas ended, the hero had to slip on a watermelon peel, fortunately, there were a lot of watermelons in Baku.
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