Carnival Night is 65!
On December 29, 1956, Eldar Ryazanov's film "Carnival Night" was released on the screens of Soviet cinemas, which became the first full-length feature film in the filmography of this director.
In the first year, only in theaters, this film was watched by more than 45 million moviegoers, or almost every fourth inhabitant of the country. Well, over the next few years, almost all Soviet moviegoers probably watched it. I dare to say this on the grounds that when I was in school in the second half of the 60s, every year during the winter holidays we were given a ticket to the cinema for every day of the holidays, and the movie "Carnival Night" was necessarily included in the subscription program.
And besides, as far as I remember, since the mid-60s, this comedy by Eldar Aleksandrovich Ryazanov was shown annually on Soviet television during the New Year holidays. And so it was until the release of another masterpiece by Eldar Ryazanov - the TV movie "Irony of Fate, or With a light steam!", which "ruled the ball" on New Year's television screens of the USSR until the beginning of Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign. But this is a completely different story. And Eldar Ryazanov's film "Carnival Night" still does not come off TV channels, at least those of them that are focused on Soviet cinema.
But the significance of this film for Soviet cinema was not only in its extreme popularity and box office figures. This film marked the birth in Soviet, and then in Russian, cinema of the great comedian - Eldar Aleksandrovich Ryazanov, who before the "Carnival Night", according to the diploma of VGIK (All-Union Institute of Cinematography), shot documentaries. And also - the appearance of the great Actress of Soviet and Russian cinema - Lyudmila Markovna Gurchenko. Although the role of Lenochka Krylova was not Gurchenko's first, but, hand on heart, who today, without a hint and reference to guidances, will remember the first role in the cinema of Lyudmila Gurchenko?
But many film critics and political scientists, along with the above-mentioned contributions of the film "Carnival Night" to Soviet cinema, note another achievement of the picture. It is believed that this film marked the end of the Stalinist era and the beginning of the so-called "thaw" period. Moreover, this opinion is expressed not only and not so much by Russian-speaking experts as by foreign film critics. For example, the French film critic Cedric Lepin in his review of the film noted: "Historically and politically, this film marks a new horizon for Russians, as three years after Stalin's death, Khrushchev announces the process of de-Stalinization and gradually begins the period known as the "thaw" after the brutal and bloody Cold War, both outside and inside the country."
To date, there is a huge mass of all kinds of materials devoted to the history of the creation of the "Carnival Night". Probably, Eldar Ryazanov himself told about this story most fully and reliably - here. As for the story of how Lyudmila Gurchenko got into this film, and what role Ivan Pyriev, the "Harvey Weinstein" of Soviet cinema, played in this, Eldar Alexandrovich is delicately silent, since Lyudmila Markovna herself told about it in some detail - here.
The enduring love of moviegoers for Eldar Ryazanov's film "Carnival Night" is evidenced by the fact that several decades after the release of the picture on the screens, the film receives very high ratings. However, now not in the form of purchased tickets for movie screenings, but in the form of ratings put up for the film on the IMDB and Kinopoisk websites. 67% of users of these sites gave the film ratings from 8 to 10. And more than 26% of users rated the film with the highest score - "ten".
With that said, the rating of Eldar Ryazanov's film "Carnival Night" according to FilmGourmand was 7,921, which allowed it to take 837th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
