Chelovek s brilliantovoi rukoi is a wide-ranging collection of Russian language scholarship (original and translated) dedicated to the oeuvre and legacy of director Leonid Gaidai (1923–93), whose “eccentric comedies” became some of the most popular and profitable films in Soviet history. The volume under review was released as part of the Kinoteksty (Cinema Texts) series by Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie (NLO, New Literary Review) as a centennial celebration of the filmmaker's birth.
This somewhat loosely structured book brings together twelve articles organized chronologically around the director's filmography, beginning with Mariia Mayofis's and Galina Orlova's explorations of Gaidai's formative, yet lesser-studied, early Thaw-era works. The two opening pieces focus on the tropes and aesthetic choices in Gaidai's directorial debut Dolgii put΄ (Long Journey, 1956), chronicle the filmmaker's encounters with Soviet censors during his work on Zhenikh s togo sveta (Fiancé from the Netherworld, 1958), and discuss the “ideologically loyal,” (38) historical-revolutionary film Trizhdy voskresshii (Thrice Resurrected, 1960) as an early form of grotesque, “cathartic laughter” (42). While detailing the circumstances surrounding the production of Fiancé from the Netherworld, Orlova's chapter also offers fascinating examples from the archival transcripts of the 1957 and 1958 Mosfilm Khudsovet (khudozhestvennyi sovet or artistic council), sessions that demanded significant cuts from the film.
A number of the volume's articles provide in-depth analyses of some of Gaidai's most successful comedies from the 1960s and 70s. Mark Lipovetsky's chapter explores the evolution of the “trickster trope” in Gaidai's works, starting with the comedic trio ViNiMor (an abbreviation of the surnames of the three actors, Georgii Vitsin, Iurii Nikulin and Evgenii Morgunov) who first appeared in the 1961 short film Pes Barbos and Neobychnyi kross (The Dog Barbos and The Unusual Race). Lipovetsky reads the ViNiMor characters, dubbed by some film scholars as a Soviet version of the Three Stooges, as a hybrid “collective personage” that combines features of diverse Soviet social strata and historical eras (86). Another trickster character analyzed in this article is George Miloslavsky from Gaidai's Ivan Vasil΄evich meniaet professiiu (Ivan Vasil΄evich Changes His Occupation, 1973), a comedy that Lipovetsky interprets as “a film about power crisis,” in which any character occupying a position of authority is, ultimately, an “imposter” (100).
Ivan Vasil'evich Changes His Occupation features prominently in other chapters. In this vein, Stephen Norris delves into the historical contexts and subtexts of this comedy, while Svetlana Pahomova offers a nuanced juxtaposition of Gaidai's Ivan Vasil'evich with Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan Groznyi (Ivan the Terrible, 1943–45). Vsevolod Korshunov provides a taxonomy of character types in Ivan Vasil΄evich and in Brilliantovaia ruka (The Diamond Arm, 1969). Another Gaidai “blockbuster,” the 1966 comedy Kavkazskaia plennitsa, ili novye prikliucheniia Shurika (Prisoner of the Caucasus or Shurik's New Adventures), is the subject of Ilya Kukulin's discussion of the film's play on Soviet ethnic stereotypes and xenophobia, as well as the concept of druzhba narodov (friendship of the peoples).
Several of the volume's articles focus on the director's major tropes, signature themes, and narrative models across a broad spectrum of his films. For example, long-time scholars of Gaidai's oeuvre, Elena Prokhorova and Aleksandr Prokhorov, provide a wide-lens view of the filmmaker's work as “metanarrative comedies” (121), while also exploring Gaidai's treatment of such themes as patriarchy, insanity, and the cults of war and aggression. As the authors trace the topos of “eternal war as the absurd norm of life” (132) in such films as The Diamond Arm, Ivan Vasil΄evich Changes His Occupation, and the director's last feature film, Na Deribasovskoi khoroshaia pogoda, na Braiton Bich opiate΄ idut dozhdi (The Weather Is Good on Deribasovskaya Street, It's Raining Again on Brighton Beach, 1992), one cannot help but sense the timelessness of Gaidai's comedies, especially in light of Russia's current war against Ukraine. The prescience of Gaidai's work is evoked in the volume's introductory essay by Russian film critic and TV host Andrei Shemiakin, who invites readers to re-watch Gaidai's films because the “genius” Soviet filmmaker “foresaw many things before the others did” (17).
Comedic insights of Gaidai's final two films are the subject of Irina Kaspe's, Tat'iana Dashkova's and Boris Stepanov's essays that consider the above-mentioned post-Soviet comedy Weather Is Good on Deribasovskaya Street and the perestroika-era Chastnyi detektiv, ili operatsiia “Kooperatsiia” (Private Detective, or Operation “Cooperation,” 1989). Dashkova and Stepanov also explore the Ukrainian city of Odesa as a symbolic locale that Gaidai chose for his last films. Cécile Vaissié places Gaidai's work in the context of global film distribution markets (and Soviet cinema exports) and discusses French press and audience responses to the filmmaker's comedies. The volume's closing chapter features an interview with a Russian film scholar and historian, Evgenii Margolit, who addresses Gaidai's role in the Soviet film industry. The afterword (Prilozhenie) features a concise biography of the director written in 2000 by film scholar and award-winning filmmaker, Evgenii Tsymbal, who also released a four-part documentary about Gaidai in 2001.
As is perhaps common with any collection of articles, the essays in the present volume vary in their methodological and analytical approaches. To provide a more cohesive overview of the somewhat disconnected kinoteksty, this first book-length study of this iconic Soviet film director would have benefited from a stronger and more theoretically grounded introductory chapter. However, the volume's richly detailed empirical data, solid theoretical observations, and nuanced discussions of individual films make Chelovek s brilliantovoi rukoi an important contribution to the fields of Slavic cultural and film studies. The volume is likely to appeal to students and scholars, as well as to a general reader and Gaidai aficionado alike.
