Independent Films, Film Profiles

The Diamond Arm
by Leonid Gaidai

The Diamond Arm (Russian: Бриллиантовая рука, translit. Brilliantovaya ruka) is a Soviet comedy film filmed by Mosfilm and first released in 1968. The film was directed by slapstick director Leonid Gaidai and starred several famous Soviet actors, including Yuri Nikulin, Andrei Mironov, Anatoli Papanov, Nonna Mordyukova and Svetlana Svetlichnaya. Brilliantovaya ruka has become a Russian cult film. It was also one of the all-time leaders at the Soviet box office with over 76,700,000 theatre admissions in the Soviet era.A Soviet-era boss of shadow economy (referred to as "The Chief" (Шеф)) wants to smuggle a batch of jewelry into Russia by hiding it into the orthopedic cast of a courier. By a confusing accident the contraband lands into the cast of a broken arm of a "simple Soviet citizen" Semyon Semyonovich Gorbunkov. He lets the militsiya know about this, and the militsiya captain uses Gorbunkov as a bait to catch the criminals. Most of the plot are various attempts of the crooks to lure Gorbunkov into a position when they could have quietly, without a wet job, taken the cast off him.