Leonid Gaidai: The film director who made the USSR laugh

“People live so hard. Let them laugh,” Leonid Gaidai (1923-1993) said. His comedies such as “Dog Barbos and Unusual Cross”, “Bootleggers”, “Operation Y and Shurik’s Other Adventures”, “Kidnapping, Caucasian Style”, “The Diamond Arm”, “Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future”, and “The Twelve Chairs” - all went on to become Soviet box office leaders, raking in millions of viewers. Quotes from these films have become catchphrases, and timeless soundtracks from these movies have also become part of popular culture. Gaidai’s movies not only remained popular in the USSR and remain popular in modern Russia – the entire world continues to laugh watching them. What’s their secret?

Charlie Chaplin, war, cinema

Leonid Gaidai was born in 1923 in the Russian Far East – his father was an exile, and worked on the construction of the Amur Railway. Later his family moved to Irkutsk. The future director had an interest in comedy ever since childhood.

Charlie Chaplin was his true idol – Gaidai went to the local cinema to watch all his films (and sometimes he hid between the seat rows during breaks to watch them again). Later, the influence of Chaplin would be apparent in his own movies – for instance, in one of his early works – “The Ransom of Red Chief”, based on O. Henry’s short story of the same name. It has barely any text, like a silent film, and its comedic effect is based on funny situations and sounds.

Very young, fresh out of school, Gaidai wanted to enlist as a volunteer and fight on the front. He wasn’t enlisted immediately, but he was called up in autumn 1941. He served in military intelligence and even was distinguished in battle, throwing grenades at a German firing point. In 1943, he seriously injured his foot when he struck a mine and remained unfit to serve in the military despite a long recovery. The young Gaidai returned to Irkutsk and, after studying in a theater studio, went to conquer Moscow, where he entered the directing department of the Institute of Cinematography (VGIK). From there, he was almost immediately accepted by Mosfilm, the USSR’s leading film studio.

The profession to make people laugh

Gaidai wanted to work in only one genre – comedy. Only once, at the beginning of his creative career, on the advice of Ivan Pyryev, Mosfilm’s director, he directed a serious movie about the Revolution, “Thrice Resurrected”. But the work was criticized, and it almost cost him his career.

Gaidai’s first big breakthrough was the short film “Dog Barbos and the Unusual Cross”. It was nominated for an award at the Cannes Film Festival. A trio of hooligans – a Coward, a Fool and a Pro – appeared in this comedy for the first time, played by Georgy Vitsin, Yuri Nikulin and Yevgeny Morgunov. The audience absolutely adored them, and they appeared many times in Gaidai’s future films.

National fame came to Gaidai with the comedy “Operation Y and Shurik’s Other Adventures” (1965), which became a Soviet box office hit. The main hero is the simple but honest and principled student Shurik, who subsequently became a true star and favorite among the Soviet people. On the wave of this unprecedented success a sequel to the movie was directed – “Kidnapping, Caucasian Style” (1967) that also took the box office by storm.

Much of the humor in Gaidai’s comedies is based on visual gags – a comic device with obvious absurdity as its base. The humorous effect is amplified by the actors’ gestures and antics. 

The comedy “The Diamond Arm” (1969) is about honest family man Semyon Gorbunkov, in whose orthopedic cast thieves have hid stolen diamonds by mistake, This film is among the three highest grossing movies in Soviet cinema history. Shurik eventually grows up and he’s no longer a student, but rather, a scientist who built a time machine. He’s the star of another iconic movie, “Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future” (1973), based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s play.

Overall, Gaidai often turned to the classics – inspired by the works of O. Henry (“Strictly Business”), Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov (“The Twelve Chairs”), Mikhail Zoshchenko (“It Can’t Be!”), and bringing them all to the silver screen.

In his last movie, shot after the collapse of the USSR - “Weather Is Good on Deribasovskaya, It Rains Again on Brighton Beach” (1993) - the director had a good laugh about Soviet leaders and the KGB.

Read more: 7 Soviet COMEDIES by Leonid Gaidai you should watch

According to the director’s wife, actress Nina Grebeshkova, young Gaidai himself resembled his movie hero Shurik. Nina and Gaidai studied in the same grade; he was older (since he came to study after the war), and he stood out, was thin and tall. He courted her modestly and awkwardly, walked her home through all of Moscow, bought flowers for her. Gaidai and Grebeshkova married when they were still students, in 1953, and lived together in the same room with her parents, separated from privy eyes with just a large closet.

In everyday life the director was quite spartan, even ascetic – he didn’t require any external comfort, dedicating all his time to his work (and spending more time on sets and in Mosfilm studios than at home). Millions of people watched his comedies, while he lived in a modest apartment and had no savings to restore his dacha that had burned down.

He also made his wife famous – as the mental hospital nurse in “Kidnapping, Caucasian Style” and the main hero’s wife in “The Diamond Arm”.

It’s often said that comedians and clowns are unhappy and grim people in real life. But certainly not Gaidai. Contemporaries remembered that in regular life he was incredibly witty, had a very refined sense of humor, often joked around, told amusing anecdotes, and liked to have fun.

He saw funny things where the majority of people didn’t see them – and revealed it to everyone. He even sometimes showed his best comedy actors how to act in certain episodes.

The secret of the success of Gaidai’s comedies

Despite the typical Soviet setting of his movies, they were relatable and funny to a viewer from any country and of any age. Actress Natalya Varley remembered how in Africa a black woman was so delighted and laughed so hard during the movie that she even threw her baby up towards the ceiling.

The secret was in the painstaking work on the script, as well as the scrupulous choice of actors and music. The screenwriter of the main comedies, “Operation Y,” “Kidnapping, Caucasian Style” and “The Diamond Arm”, Yakov Kostyukovsky, remembered that Gaidai and he always worked on the script together and they had their own “formula.” They always considered whether their work would be comprehensible to some babushka somewhere, for example, in Yoshkar-Ola. 

Actor Yuri Nikulin remembered that Gaidai put a lot of detailed work into every scene – he shot and reshot, not sparing any film. The most important signal was that the camera crew and projectionists were laughing. “That means there’s something in it,” Gaidai said. That means others will also laugh.

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