The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!
Short description
A group of longtime friends gather at a public bathhouse on New Year's Eve, a tradition they have kept for years. Vodka and beer flow freely, and by the end of the evening two of them have passed out. One of the friends is supposed to fly to Leningrad that night, and in their drunken confusion the others put the wrong man on the plane. He wakes up at the Leningrad airport still convinced he is in Moscow, takes a taxi to what he believes is his own address, and lets himself in with his own key. The street, the building and the apartment number all match, a consequence of the standardized Soviet housing of the era. He is found there by the woman who actually lives in the flat, and by her fiancé.
Eldar Ryazanov directed and co-wrote the film with Emil Braginskiy. It came between Sovershenno seryozno (1961) and Old Hags (2000) in his filmography. Andrey Myagkov plays Zhenya Lukashin and Barbara Brylska plays Nadia Sheveleva, with Yuriy Yakovlev, Aleksandr Shirvindt, Georgi Burkov and Aleksandr Belyavskiy among the twenty credited cast members. The film runs 192 minutes and was produced by Mosfilm. On IMDb it holds 8 out of 10 from around 15,000 votes, while on TMDB it has 7.3 out of 10 from roughly 273 votes.
What's left behind the scenes
- Rязанов carefully selected the performers for the main roles. Andrei Mironov really wanted to play Zhenya Lukashin, but Rязанов only saw him in the image of Ippolit. Pyotr Velyaminov and Stanislav Lyubshin could also have been Lukashin.
- In addition to the television premiere on January 1, 1976, the film was released in cinemas on August 16, 1976.
- Best film according to a poll by the magazine “Soviet Screen” in 1977.
- The cinema version is almost half an hour shorter – its duration is 155 minutes.
- The famous scene in the bathhouse, where friends gather before the New Year, was filmed after the May Day holidays. Bathhouse benches and scales were set up under the stairs in one of the corridors of Mosfilm.
- Lukashin flies to Leningrad from Domodedovo Airport, although in Soviet times, domestic flights to the north and west were operated from Sheremetyevo-1.
- In Moscow, 3rd Builders Street existed since 1958, but in 1963 it was renamed – now it's Maria Ulianova Street, and building number 25 on this street is a Khrushchev-era five-story building. In Leningrad, 3rd Builders Street never existed; however, from 1955 to 1962 there were immediately two Builders Streets, one in the industrial zone of the Krasnogvardeysky district; this street is now called Boksitogorskaya, the second – in the Kirovsky district, now – Marinesko Street.
- Zhenya throws a photograph of Ippolit out the window, and later Nadya picks up from the snow not a photograph of Yuri Yakovlev, but of Oleg Basilashvili, who had previously received the role of Ippolit and filmed several scenes, but was forced to give up filming due to his father's death. This shot could no longer be reshot because spring had arrived and the snow had melted.
- Filming of the movie took place from January 22nd to June 19th, 1975.
- "How disgusting is this jellied fish of yours" and "Oh, it's getting warm, that's good" – these phrases were not in the film's script. They were improvised by Yuri Yakovlev.
- The following actresses auditioned for the role of Nadya Sheveleva: Lyudmila Gurchenko, Svetlana Nemolyaeva, Antonina Shuranova, actress Merimson from the Kirov Drama Theatre, and others. Tariverdiev persistently persuaded the director to invite Alisa Freindlich. Then Rязаnov remembered the Polish melodrama "Anatomy of Love", where Barbara Brylska played the main female role. He obtained her phone number and called her in Warsaw. After reading the script, Barbara flew to Moscow for a screen test. Her interpretation of the role proved to be the most convincing.
- At the beginning of the film, Zhenya and Galya mention Katanyan several times in conversation, who invited them to celebrate the New Year at his place. This surname also appears in another of Rязаnov's films – "Forgotten Melody for Flute", where Leonid Filatov's character introduces himself that way. Presumably, Eldar Rязаnov wanted to immortalize his college friend, director Vasily Katanyan, with whom he shot documentaries as a cameraman in the 1950s.
- Almost immediately after Zhenya leaves, Ippolit turns on the television, where the film "The Straw Hat" (1974) is playing, which was first shown on December 31, 1974, on the first program of Central Television of the USSR, meaning the characters are celebrating the New Year of 1975.
- There is a typo in the opening credits of the film: in the word "исключительно" (exclusively) in the phrase "A completely untypical story that could only happen and искючительно on New Year's Eve"), the letter "л" is missing.
- Eldar Ryazanov played one of his characteristic supporting roles in the film—a passenger on a plane who is constantly leaned on by a sleeping Lukashin. According to Ryazanov himself, he was very upset when, while reviewing the footage, he discovered that his bald spot was visible through his hair, which was not yet sparse.
- The film was shot in an apartment in a panel building located at 125 Vernadsky Avenue in Moscow. This building, however, was built according to an experimental project implemented in only three buildings on this avenue. The interiors of the Leningrad apartment were filmed in building 113. In 2003, a plaque featuring images of Barbara Brylska and Andrei Myagkov was unveiled on the wall of building 125 Vernadsky Avenue. However, this plaque is frequently stolen and has to be restored.
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