Karnavalnaya noch
| The Carnival Night | |
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Original film poster by Mikhail Heifits, 1956.
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| Directed by | Eldar Ryazanov |
| Written by | Boris Laskin Vladimir Polyakov |
| Starring |
Igor Ilyinsky Lyudmila Gurchenko Yuri Belov |
| Music by | Anatoli Lepin |
| Cinematography | Arkadi Koltsaty |
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Production
company |
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Release date
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1956 (Soviet Union) November 2, 1957 (U.S.) |
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Running time
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78 min. |
| Country | Soviet Union |
| Language | Russian |
| Box office | 48.64 million tickets sold. |
The Carnival Night (Russian: Карнавальная ночь, translit. 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.
Mosfilm's director of that time Ivan Pyryev was the one who appointed Eldar Ryazanov to direct the picture despite Ryazanov not having interest in musicals at that time. Pyryev was heavily involved in the making of the film, assisting Ryazanov every step of the way.
Because the picture was Ryazanov's first directorial experience, the young director was met with severe skepticism and after seeing half of the filmed material the artistic council was convinced that the film would turn out to be a huge failure.
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Wikipedia