Carnival Night

The Carnival Night
Original film poster by Mikhail Heifits, 1956.
Directed by	Eldar Ryazanov
Written by	Boris Laskin Vladimir Polyakov
Starring	Igor Ilyinsky Lyudmila Gurchenko Yuri Belov
Music by	Anatoli Lepin
Cinematography	Arkadi Koltsaty
Production company	Mosfilm
Release date	1956 (Soviet Union) November 2, 1957 (U.S.)
Running time	78 min.
Country	Soviet Union
Language	Russian

The Carnival Night (Russian: Карнавальная ночь, Karnavalnaya noch) is a 1956 Soviet musical film. It is Eldar Ryazanov's first big-screen film, Lyudmila Gurchenko's first role and also one of the most famous films starring popular comedian Igor Ilyinsky.The film became the Soviet box office leader of 1956 with a total of 48.64 million tickets sold.

It is New Year's Eve and the employees of a House of culture are ready with their annual New Year's entertainment program. It includes a lot of dancing and singing, jazz band performance and even magic tricks. Suddenly, an announcement is made that a new director has been appointed and that he is arriving shortly. Comrade Ogurtsov arrives in time to review and disapprove of the scheduled entertainment. To him, holiday fun has a different meaning. He imagines speakers reading annual reports to show the club's progress over the year, and, perhaps, a bit of serious music, something from the Classics, played by the Veterans' orchestra.

Obviously, no one wants to change the program a few hours before the show, much less to replace it with something so boring! Now everyone has to team up in order to prevent Ogurtsov from getting to the stage. As some of them trap Ogurtsov one way or another, others perform their scheduled pieces and celebrate New Year's Eve.