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The Diamond Arm

Бриллиантовая рука (The Diamond Arm) is one of the most popular comedy film from the Soviet era. Produced by Mosfilm studios and directed by Леонид Гайдай (Leonid Gaidai) in 1968, the film stars many famous actors like Yuri Nikulin, Andrei Mironov, Nina Grebeshkova.

The film relates the story of a smuggler who wants to illegally transfer jewellery from Turkey to Soviet Union. The plan is to hide the jewellery into a plaster cast of a courier, but after some confusion, the cast is put on a honest Soviet citizen, who find out about the fraud. He then, tell the police about it.

The shooting of the film was not easy. It all started with the script being censored because of the role of the police which was thought too passive, the drunken scenes and the scenes with prostitutes. In short, almost everything needed to be rewrite.

To save the film the way it was written, Leonid Gaidai used a trick: he added a scene of a nuclear explosion on the sea in the end of the film, telling the censorship members that he was ready to give up any scene but not this one. On the question why he needed this scene, he answered “Неужели вы забыли о сложнейшей международной обстановке? Империализм размахивает ядерной дубиной!” (Have you forgotten about the complicated international situation? The Imperialism brandishing its nuclear stick!)

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The commission agreed to keep the film as it was but only if the nuclear explosion was removed.