The eccentric Soviet comedy The Diamond Arm boasts a wide geography of filming. The viewer was shown a cruise on the Mediterranean Sea on a snow-white liner, and the narrow streets of a sultry eastern city, and the hometown of the economist Semyon Gorbunkov, who accidentally got into a crime cover. The filming schedule was as hectic as the film was light and sparkling.
Episodes in Moscow and Moscow region
Filming began on April 25, 1968 at 9 am at Mosfilm. There, in the pavilions, the apartments of the Chief and the Graf, or Gesha Kozodoev were created. Later in the pavilions of Mosfilm they rented an apartment of the Gorbunkovs, the cabin of the ship's captain, the hotel room of the fatal seductress and the Weeping Willow restaurant.
There were also field shooting in Moscow. One of them took place on Leninsky Prospekt, opposite the side entrance to the Gorky Park of Culture and Leisure. There, on the steps of the underground toilet, Gorbunkov meets a character who frightened him with a medallion in the form of a skull on his hairy chest. In a department store on Komsomolsky Prospekt, scenes were filmed in a thrift store, where the beautiful blonde Anna Sergeevna promises Gorbunkov a robe with mother-of-pearl buttons if he visits her at the hotel. On a vacant lot in Kuntsevo, they filmed a scene where the Chef plants trees at a cleanup and finds a tin can with coins, which he himself hid there.
The intimidating type on the stairs was not a professional actor at all, but Smena journalist Leonid Pleshakov. He was invited to play this role because of his characteristic appearance, and he agreed in exchange for an interview with Yuri Nikulin.
Automotive scenes were filmed in the suburbs - in Pavlovskaya Sloboda. It was there that Chef's brand new Moskvich was racing along the forest lanes, Lelik drove Gorbunkov to the car wash to remove the plaster of paris with diamonds from him “without noise and dust,” Gesha Kozodoev chased them on his motorcycle.
Shooting on the Black Sea
Basically, the unnamed town, where the main action of the film takes place, was filmed in the Black Sea resorts - in Adler and Sochi. On May 17, the film crew moved to Adler, to the Horizon Hotel. They also filmed scenes with the ship, which became famous as "Mikhail Svetlov", but in fact was called "Victory". However, Leonid Gaidai loved the work of the poet Mikhail Svetlov so much that he asked to rename the ship for one day. The name was changed even on the lifebuoys, and all the scenes on the ship were filmed in one day.
After the release of the film on the screens and its sensational success among the public, the very first motor ship launched was named "Mikhail Svetlov".
For the main battle with smugglers, a car wash was specially built in the central region of Sochi. After filming the film, she worked as usual.
The unsuccessful fishing trip on the White Rock was filmed not far from Tuapse. The sound above the water carried well, so heart-rending cries for help from the character of Andrei Mironov reached the beach two kilometers from the filming location. Vacationers were alarmed, a boat was sent to save the person. However, as soon as the boat approached the drowning man, a terrible roar of a loudspeaker was heard: “Comrades! Get out of frame! Shooting is in progress!"
City of the diamond hand
In August, the film crew moved to Baku to film the Arab city, where the fatal fall of the protagonist takes place at a pharmacy - a smugglers' shelter. The street next to the pharmacy is the old Baku street Malaya Krepostnaya. Here Yuri Nikulin tried for a long time to slip on a banana peel, but only wasted bananas - fruits that were rare for those times, which were bought especially for this shot. When the bananas ran out, the hero had to slip on the watermelon rind, fortunately, there were a lot of watermelons in Baku.
