I would like to thank my colleagues and mentors who read this article in full or in part at various stages of its development. I owe a special debt to Helena Goscilo and Lucy Fischer. Lucy’s seminars on film theory and comedy, and especially her article on comedy and matricide, sparked my interest in film comedy. Helena simply taught me how to theorize culture, made many helpful suggestions on the article, and went through every page of the final draft with a critical eye. I am indebted to Vladimir Padunov, Tony Anemone, Roberta Hatcher, and the anonymous readers at Slavic Review for their comments and suggestions. Their critiques proved invaluable, and where I stubbornly refused to follow their advice, the fault rests entirely with myself. Finally, my special thanks go to Birgit Beumers for her friendly patience and encouragement. The epigraphs are taken from Aristode, , Poetics, trans. Else, Gerald F. (Ann Arbor, 1970), 23–24 Google Scholar, and Kuleshov, Lev, “Americanism,” in Taylor, Richard and Christie, Ian, eds., The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents,1896-1939, trans. Taylor, Richard (London, 1994), 72 Google Scholar.

1 Gaidai’s Operation Y and Other Adventures of Shurik brought 70 million spectators to Soviet movie theaters and became the most watched film of the year. See Segida, Miroslava and Zemlianukhin, Sergei, Domashniaia sinemateka (Moscow, 1996), 303 Google Scholar. Gaidai’s Captive of the Caucasus or the Neiu Adventures of Shurik repeated the success of Operation Y and became the most attended film the following year: 77 million viewers. The Diamond Arm again ranked first among Soviet films for the year, attracting 77 million viewers. Ibid., 186, 4 4 - 45. In 1995 the Russian television channel RTR named The Diamond Arm “the best comedy ever made” and awarded it the “Golden Ticket” prize. See Brashinskii, Mikhail, “Leonid Gaidai,” Kinoslovar': Noveishaia istoriia otechestvennogo kino 1986-2000 (St. Petersburg, 2001), 233–34Google Scholar.

2 Attendance at Riazanov’s films during the 1960s was high, but considerably lower than that at Gaidai’s: The Hussar’s Ballad (49 million viewers), Give Me the Complaints Book (29.9 million viewers), Beware of the Car (29 million viewers), and Zigzag of Luck (24 million viewers). Riazanov’s 1961 comedy Chelovek niotkuda (A man from nowhere) was shelved.

No numbers are available for tickets sold to the portmanteau film Sovershenno ser'ezno (Absolutely serious, 1961), where both Riazanov’s “How Robinson Was Created,” and Gaidai’s short “Pes Barbos i neobyknovennyi kross” (Dog Barbos and the unusual race) appeared. All critics, however, point out that it was Gaidai’s short diat made Absolutely Serious popular. Lev Lainer notes that out of five shorts in Absolutely Serious, only Gaidai’s was purchased for the price of a feature film by almost a hundred countries. See Lainer, Lev, Veselaiatroitsa (Moscow, 2001), 27 Google Scholar. See also Pupsheva, Mariia, Ivanov, Valerii, and Tsukerman, Vladimir, Gaidai sovetskogo soiuza (Moscow, 2002), 68–89 Google Scholar. Riazanov’s Irony of Fate premiered first on television and then because of its phenomenal success was released in die movie theaters, where 7 million tickets were sold. Office Romance drew 58.4 million viewers. For data on ticket sales, see http://www.nashekino.ru (last consulted 12 May 2003).

3 See Braginskii, Emil' and Riazanov, El’dar, Beregis' avtomobilia (Moscow, 1965)Google Scholar.

4 See Paul, William, Laughing Screaming: Modern Hollywood Horror and Comedy (New York, 1994), 33–34 Google Scholar.

5 Paul contends that the change in social structure also increased the prominence of certain speech genres, such as black slang among white youth. Paul, Laughing Screaming, 34. In Russia, after Nikita Khrushchev liberated millions of camp inmates, jail argot (vorovskoe argo) assumed a position comparable to that of black slang in the speech of liberal intellectuals and youth.

6 See Taylor, Richard, “Ideology as Mass Entertainment: Boris Shumiatskii and Soviet Cinema in the 1930s,” in Taylor, Richard and Christie, Ian, eds., Inside the Film Factory: NewApproaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema (London, 1991)Google Scholar.

7 Woll, Josephine, Real Images: Soviet Cinema and the Thaw (London, 2000), 50–56, 188-90Google Scholar.

8 Iurenev, Rostislav, Sovetskaia kinokomediia (Moscow, 1964)Google Scholar.

9 Less ideologically orthodox critics, such as, for example, Vladimir Propp, still referred to Hollywood comedy as die one that, above all, unleashes base instincts in humans. See Propp’s discussion of Billy Wilder’s 1959 comedy Some Like It Hot: the critic attacks the filmmaker for creating an immoral gag out of a murder. Propp, Vladimir, Problemy komizmaismekha (Moscow, 1999), 160–61Google Scholar.

10 Although published in the late 1990s, Propp’s Problemy komizma i smekha was written in the 1960s and 1970s.

11 Propp, Problemy komizma, 201.

12 This film was placed in the third distribution category, a status awarded to films that were either artistic or political failures. See Lainer, Veselaia troitsa, 301.

13 Gunning, Tom, “An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator,” in Braudy, Leo and Cohen, Marshall, eds., Film Theory and Criticism: IntroductoryReadings, 5th ed. (New York, 1999), 825 Google Scholar.

14 Gunning, Tom, “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectators and the Avant-Garde,” WideAngleS, nos. 3 - 4 (1986): 64 Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., 66

16 Gunning, “An Aesthetic of Astonishment,” 822.

17 See Kuleshov, “Americanism,” 72-73. See also Kuleshov, “Mr West,” in Taylor and Christie, eds., The Film Factory, 108.

18 Boris Barnet played an American cowboy on a trip to Russia in Kuleshov’s eccentric comedy The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks and made the witty romantic comedies Devushka skorobkoi (The girl with the hat box, 1927) and Domna Trubnoi (The house on Trubnaia Square, 1928).

19 See Riazanov, El'dar, Nepodvedennye itogi (Moscow, 1995), 19–21 Google Scholar.

20 Ibid., 48-55. Taylor, Richard, “Singing on the Steppes for Stalin: Ivan Pyr'ev and the Kolkhoz Musical in Soviet Cinema,” Slavic Review 58, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 143–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 See Evgenii Dobrenko’s Bakhtinian analysis of Volga-Volga and Carnival Night in “Soviet Comedy Film, or the Carnival of Authority,” Discourse 17, no. 3 (Spring 1995): 49 -57. For a discussion of Sun Valley Serenade, see Stites, Richard, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainmentand Society since 1900 (Cambridge, Eng., 1992), 126 Google Scholar.

22 In the 1950s and early 1960s the literary miscellany emerged as one of the forms of liberal literary publications. Literaturnaia Moskva and Tarusskie stranitsy became the bestknown miscellanies because they both introduced new writers, such as Aleksandr Iashin and Naum Korzhavin, for example, and revived in cultural memory the forgotten names of such authors as Marina Tsvetaeva and Nikolai Zabolotskii. The publication of the miscellanies was usually accompanied by conflicts with cultural authorities. See Moser, Charles, ed., The Cambridge History of Russian Literature (Cambridge, Eng., 1992), 530–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 In addition, Absolutely Serious included “A Story with Pies” (Trakhtenberg), “Foreigners“ (Zmoiro), and “Bon Appetit!” (Semakov).

24 See Carl, and Proffer, Ellendea, eds., Russian Literature of the Twenties: An Anthology (Ann Arbor, 1987), 371–74Google Scholar.

25 My understanding of the sight gag follows Noel Carroll’s definition: “The sight gag is a form of visual humor in which amusement is generated by the play of alternative interpretations projected by the image or the images series… . And it is this play of alternative, often conflicting interpretations, rooted first and foremost in the visual organization of the scene, that primarily causes the amusement that attends sight gags.” See Carroll, Noel, “Notes on the Sight Gag,” in Horton, Andrew, ed., Comedy, Cinema, Theory (Berkeley, 1991), 26 Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., 28.

27 Ibid., 30, 31.

28 Georgii Vitsyn (1918-2001) studied acting at the Vakhtangov Theater School and the Second MKhAT School and enjoyed popularity as an actor in both theater and film. He appeared in 94 films, both comedies and dramas. Iurii Nikulin (1921-1997) started his performing career as a circus clown, became a popular film actor, and served as the director of the Moscow Circus on Tsvetnoi Boulevard until his death. After Nikulin’s death the circus was renamed Nikulin’s Moscow Circus on Tsvetnoi Boulevard. Evgenii Morgunov (1927-1999) was primarily a film actor at MosfiTm Studio, although he also performed at the Teatr studiia kinoaktera. He started his career in 1948 in Sergei Gerasimov’s film adaptation of a socialist realist novel, Molodaia guardiia (The young guard) by Aleksander Fadeev. In 1963 Morgunov also directed a comedy, Kogda kazaki plachut (When Cossacks cry), whose screenplay he coauthored with Mikhail Sholokhov.

29 On the history of folk crime narratives see Zorkaia, Neia, Fol'klor, Lubok, Ekran (Moscow, 1994), 71–86,112-34Google Scholar.

30 In the comedy titled Sem! starikov i odna devushka (Seven old men and a girl, 1968), the filmmaker, Evgenii Karelov, invited ViNiMor to his production. Among other jokes, Karelov focused specifically on the gender distinctions between Morgunov and Vitsyn. When they use a public restroom, Vitsyn goes to the Women’s and Morgunov goes to the Men’s.

31 Andrei Rublev’s name and work returned to cultural circulation during this period as part of a renewed interest in non-Soviet Russian history. Rublev’s Trinity also became a culturally familiar image after the release of Andrei Tarkovskii’s Andrei Rublev (1969).

32 Gaidai also planned to finish his later film The Diamond Arm with a nuclear explosion, which was for him the ultimate sight gag. See Natal'ia Savitskaia and Svetlana Lepeshkova, “Iadernyi vzryv v ‘Brilliantovoi ruke,’” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 31 January 2003. Obviously, Gaidai was asked to cut the documentary footage of a nuclear explosion because, for the cultural administrators, a nuclear explosion belonged among serious political and ideological narratives, into whose company a comedy could by no means be incorporated. For Gaidai, however, a nuclear explosion was a cinematic event set against the grain of a film’s narrative.

33 Lainer, Veselaia troitsa, 7, 27-28.

34 See the pioneering discussion of this subject in Clark’s, Katerina “Aural Hieroglyphics?” in Condee, Nancy, ed., Soviet Hieroglyphics (London, 1995), 1–21 Google Scholar.

35 Taylor, “Singing on the Steppes,” 143-44.

36 Lainer, Veselaia troitsa, 31.

37 Ibid., 37.

38 Ibid., 52.

39 Ibid., 289-90.

40 Ibid., 40.

41 See, for example, Georgii Daneliia and Igor’ Talankin’s Serezha (1960), Mikhail Kalik’s Chelovek idet za solntsem (A man follows the sun, 1961), and, finally, Andrei Tarkovskii’s Ivanovo detstvo (Ivan’s childhood, 1962) and Andrei Rublev (1969).

42 Gaidai’s short is based on O'Henry’s story “The Ransom of Red Chief.“

43 In the original version of the screenplay, the protagonist’s name was Edik. Later the name was changed to one more popular in the 1960s, Shurik. Lainer, Veselaia troitsa, 47.

44 Ibid., 55.

45 Riazanov, Nepodvedennye itogi, 146-49.

46 See Chukhrai, Grigorii, Moe kino (Moscow, 2002), 166, 183Google Scholar. According to an online film encyclopedia, Nashe kino, 39 million viewers watched Twelve Chairs and 60.7 million viewed Ivan Vasil'evich: Back to theFuture in their respective years of release. See http://www.nashekino.ru (last consulted 12 May 2003).