Kidnapping, Caucasian Style

Kidnapping, Caucasian Style (1967)

Кавказская пленница, или Новые приключения Шурика

Shurik, a kind but naïve ethnography student, falls in love with the intelligent, athletic and beautiful All-Union Leninist Young Communist League member Nina. He has a rival in the wealthy comrade Saakhov, who concocts a kidnapping scheme to force Nina to marry him.

Date of release
1967-04-03
TMDB
7.6 / 10 (305)
Runtime
1h 22m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Leonid Gaidai

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Crimea, Alushta, and Simferopol

Prisoner of the Caucasus or Shurik's New Adventures is a 1967 Soviet romantic musical comedy film dealing with a plot revolving around bride kidnapping, an old tradition that used to exist in certain regions of the Northern Caucasus.

Background and production

As a result of the popularity of the earlier film, Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures, Yakov Kostyukovsky and Moris Slobodsky requested Mosfilm to support a new film about the character of Shurik. The screenplay for the new film was initially titled "Shurik in the Mountains" and was divided into two parts.

Kidnapping, Caucasian Style followed the success of Gaidai's previous film, Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures, which featured some of the same characters (Shurik, and the trio of Coward, Fool, and Pro). According to one of the writers, Yakov Kostyukovsky, Gaidai had decided that the trio had reached the height of their popularity and did not want to feature them again.

Yuri Nikulin and Evgeny Morgunov initially refused to be part of the film as they felt the screenplay was too unrealistic. In the end, Gaidai convinced both actors to reprise their roles by agreeing to make some adjustments to the screenplay. It also took a long time to cast the role of Nina, with more than 500 screen tests completed before Natalya Varley was selected for the role.

In the case of the character of Saakhov, there were disagreements between Gaidai and the actor playing Saakhov, Vladimir Etush. While Etush thought Saakhov should be played as an accomplished, intelligent man who takes himself seriously, Gaidai wanted more of an over-the-top performance.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended