Mister X (1958 film)

Mister X
Directed by	Yuli Khmelnitsky
Written by	Yuli Khmelnitsky Nora Rubinstein
Based on	Die Zirkusprinzessin by Imre Kálmán
Starring	Georg Ots
Music by	Imre Kálmán
Cinematography
Production company	Lenfilm
Release date	1958 (1958)
Running time	95 minutes
Country	Soviet Union
Language	Russian

Mister X (Russian: Мистер Икс) is a musical comedy film directed by and based on the Russian version of the operetta Die Zirkusprinzessin.

The scenario of the Leningrad Theatre of Musical Comedy operetta Mister X, dated 1956, was used as the basis for the film Mister X, which began filming in 1957. Most of the actors and some artists in the film were members of the aforementioned theater.

Mister X premiered in the Soviet Union and in other countries on the May 2nd, 1958.

Trophy movies began to appear on Soviet screens in 1948. At this time the Soviet Union was working feverishly to create their own nuclear weapons and the Soviet government desperately needed money. It was decided, with the purpose of replenishment of the state budget, to permit a number of "bourgeois" films, which were captured by the Red Army in Germany and other European countries. As subsequent events showed, this decision was a serious ideological miscalculation of the Communist government. The "trophy" movie ruined an entire generation of Soviet youth, awakening in them the dream of a different, non-Soviet life. Joseph Brodsky said: "Only four series of the film Tarzan contributed more de-Stalinization than all Khrushchev's speech during the XX Congress and subsequently." However, it appears that the history of "trophy" movies began much earlier, — after the campaign of the Red Army in Poland in September 1939.

Cinema historian Alexandr Pozdnyakov said: "Beginning of the 1950s period received name of "a little quantity movies" period in the Soviet Union. In 1952 only six films were produced by the big Soviet cinema system. The interest of the Soviet population was taken by the "trophy" films, in which aristocratic life was showed in full positive." It was necessary to back to the Soviet films and ideology. The Soviet film Mister X was a convincing reply to the Hollywood. This film was not atomic bomb, but it was a Cold War period Soviet film with the aim: "To back the Soviet cinema viewers". This film also had other aims.