Good Soviet cinema is more and more often included in the evenings in the family circle, especially if these are films of the famous director Leonid Gaidai. One of his works "Private detective, or Operation" Cooperation "is a comedy rather in the early Gaidar style. There is a place here for hilarious situations and good memories of a bygone time.
The history of the film
The filming of the tape took place in Odessa in the spring and summer of 1989. The motion picture is a comedy of the classic genre and is one of Gaidai's later works. She appeared on the screens in the 1990 perestroika year. The director made a film on the topic of the day. The picture in a comic form presents the entire unsightly side of perestroika in the USSR. Shows the history of cooperators, speculators and small fraudsters seeking to earn rubles faster and invest them in dollars.
Such a vaudeville with a detective plot at that moment turned out to be a very relevant picture on the screen. The film "Private detective, or Operation" Cooperation "was watched by many spectators, and many young actors of this tape got a good start in their future careers.
Unlike all other previous works of Leonid Gaidai, the musical accompaniment in this film is performed not by a live orchestra, but played on synthesizers.
The twists and turns of the plot of the painting "Private detective, or Operation" Cooperation"
The film begins with a scene of an attempted hijacking by a terrorist (played by Leonid Yarmolnik) of a Soviet airliner. The attempt is successfully suppressed thanks to the decisive actions of the young man Dmitry Puzyrev (played by Dmitry Kharatyan). Dmitry Puzyrev turns out to be a budding entrepreneur, who later, under the influence of his success on the plane, decides to open a private detective bureau.
The young man immediately shows outstanding abilities in the detective business and organizes his own cooperative to search for criminals. His childhood friend Victor, the director of the cooperative toilet "Comfort", helps him to obtain a patent for such an activity.
However, it turns out that Victor is connected with the local mafia, and his cooperative activities are just a cover for illegal affairs. Puzyrev's first serious case is the investigation into the kidnapping of a cooperator.
In parallel, the plot develops the line of the main character - a young journalist Lena, who conducts her reports undercover in the form of a prostitute or an alcoholic. She dreams of writing iconic articles about prostitutes and everything unusual in the life of society. Her next editorial assignment is to create a reportage about a new phenomenon in the city - the first private detective story.
During the operation to expose Viktor's activities, Dmitry meets Lena and falls in love with her, not knowing that she is a journalist. In his dreams, he imagines how he guides the girl on the right path. A whirlwind romance breaks out between young people, which fuels interest in the development of the plot.
The picture shows a group of militiamen "Experts" - a parody of the characters of the famous TV series "The Investigation is being conducted by experts" and Major Pronin (here is Major Cronin).
The film itself makes fun of the most pressing topics for the late Soviet period - cooperation, racketeering, guilds, corruption, bureaucracy, informal youth movements, prostitution, drug addiction, moonshine, fashion for "boiled water", etc. All this is served with Gaidar's inherent humor in typical the director's creativity in an eccentric manner.
The main characters of the film are young, bright, ambitious and talented. They got used to the role so much that many viewers believed that the actors were experiencing a real romance, and not just playing love in the frame.
Main characters and cast of the comedy film
Leonid Gaidai, as always in his works, involved the actresses and actors he loved: Leonid Kuravlev, Natalia Krachkovskaya, Nina Grebeshkova. And although the roles of these talented artists in this film are secondary, the images they created became a vivid decoration of the picture.
New actors also appeared in the comedy - representatives of young people and little-known artists. First of all, these include the main characters performed by Dmitry Kharatyan, who played the role of private detective Puzyrev, and Irina Feofanova, the journalist Lena.
The famous Spartak Mishulin played in the film the role of Georgy Mikhailovich Puzyrev, Dmitry's father.
The main characters of the comedy were close in age. However, Dmitry Kharatyan had already established himself in the cinema earlier. He was well known to the Soviet audience. But Irina Feofanova was a young graduate of a theater university, with practically no experience in filming. Despite this, she coped with her acting task perfectly. Although she was not trusted to voice the role, Nadezhda Rumyantseva speaks in the voice of her heroine.
After the release of the picture on the screens, the fate of Kharatyan and Feofanova developed differently. Dmitry, even in the difficult 90s, was an actor in demand in the cinema, his film chronicle is huge, in addition to this, he also performed as a singer. Today this artist is just as successful, but he is no longer playing young boys, but men who are wise with experience.
But Irina Feofanova, unfortunately, could not take advantage of her excellent start and become a famous actress. Perhaps due to the confusion in the Russian film industry in the 90s, the girl received few offers. Therefore, in the end, the actress founded a children's theater studio, the head of which remains to this day.
Supporting roles and film actors
In the role of the negative character - the director of the cooperative toilet "Comfort" Victor, actor Roman Madyanov starred. The young man was not known to the general public before working in Gaidai's painting. This role became significant for his career, after the release of the film, the young actor began to be recognized on the street.
Almost all the actors of Gaidai's comedy film received from the director a kind of ticket to big cinema. The talent of Mikhail Svetin, who played the role of Ivan Ivanovich Pukhov, the chairman of the "Radost" cooperative, has clearly established himself here. Pukhov was the father of the main character.
Mikhail Svetin was able to embody in his role both the good nature of a loving father, and the naive purity of an ordinary Soviet man, and the image of a "happy loser", well known to all Soviet people of that time.
In addition to the actors unfamiliar to the general public, the stars of the Soviet cinema were involved in the picture. Appearing in small roles, they formed the main backbone of the picture. One of these actors was Semyon Farada, a mafia from Italy. Nikolai Rybnikov appeared here in the form of a candidate for deputy, and Evgeny Zharikov - “Professor” of a moonshiner.
Several more people starred in this film, whose works should be discussed in more detail. The outraged veteran at the reception of the young Puzyrev is none other than the famous Sergei Filippov. Interesting fact: this was the last work in the cinema of a popular actor.
The unlucky terrorist hijacker of the plane is brilliantly reflected in the game of Leonid Yarmolnik. Alexander Belyavsky, in his usual manner, showed the police officer - Major Kazimir Afanasyevich Kronin.
Nina Grebeshkova played the mother of journalist Lena, Anna Petrovna Pukhova. Leonid Kuravlyov embodied the image of Semyon Semenovich Sukhov, editor of the newspaper Lena worked for. His famous phrase: “I spent the whole day in the police! If you only knew that I should have persuaded them not to register you as a prostitute! - entered the people.
The film was played by Mikhail Kokshenov as a bully, Natalya Krachkovskaya as a passenger on an airplane with a girl, Muza Krepkogorskaya as a neighbor, Vladimir Druzhnikov and Emmanuel Geller also got the roles of plane passengers.
