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Nebyvalshchina
Believe It or Not
USSR 1983
produced by
Lenfilm
directed by Sergei Ovcharov
starring Alexander Kuznetsov, Aleksey Buldakov, Sergei Bekhterev, Igor Ivanov, Nina Usatova, Margarita Matveyeva, Vyacheslav Polunin, Nikolai Terentyev, Valeri Zakhavyev, I. Alyoshina, tatyana Zakharova, N. Makaryev, G. Nikol, O. Romanovskaya, Anatoli Slivnikov
screenplay by Sergei Ovcharov, based on the short story Vodolazy by V.Shishkov, music by Igor Macievskij
review by
Mike Haberfelner
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It's war, so all the healthy men have left for the battlefield, making
a few outcasts like a simpleton, an unsuccessful inventor of flying
machines and a thief and womanizer the only men left in town. The
simpleton is soon married to a farmer's daughter, but when in their
wedding night he shows total ignorance of what to do, she chases him away and takes the thief and womanizer in his stead. The
inventor likewise is chased out of town, because his experiments have
caused a few too many explosions. Walking the countryside, the simpleton
meets a deserter from the army, and the two stumble from one adventure to
the next, each more bizarre than the last - until they land in hell, where
they meet the inventor, who still tries to get a flying machine going. The
simpleton, the deserter and the inventor soon adapt to life in hell and in
fact feel so at home that the devil decides to throw them out again. With
all that he has experienced, the simpleton has become a changed man, and
when he returns to his wife - who has long thrown out her lover -, she welcomes him with open arms, and before
you know it they have a dozen or so children. Somehow that doesn't make
the simpleton happy though and he has himself turned into a child again
... Charming collection of Russian folk tales with an emphasis
on their surreal aspects, carried by a likeable ensemble cast and a
directorial effort that's consciously old-fashioned without being out of
time and that doesn't shy away from quoting silent slapstick cinema
without ever embarrassing itself. The main (and only) flaw of the whole
film is its episodic structure which is of course caused by the diversity of
the source material but which also prevents the film from ever creating
much narrative stringency and tension, and because of that, the film
seems to end at a rather deliberate point of its plot, and on a punchline
that makes little sense in the context of the movie. Still, a rather
entertaining film.
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