Operation Y in detail

Sviblovo. Now this place is the courtyard of a kindergarten

It is difficult to write about famous and beloved films, much less write something new. Leonid Gaidai's film "Operation Y and other adventures of Shurik" has been one of the most popular Soviet films for forty years now.

We love this movie too. Moreover, “Operation Y” became for us the embodiment of the 1960s - a time of bright, naive and already so far from us. We were interested in what details this amazing landscape was made of, what streets and buildings, as well as cars were included in the frame.

It was not possible to find anything on the Internet on this topic, except that the film was filmed in 1964-65 in Moscow, as well as Leningrad, Odessa and Yalta. So we tried to do this work ourselves.

It's probably worth noting right away that we haven't read anything about the filming of the film other than a couple of newspaper articles. Perhaps everything we have written is already widely known. But even if we did extra work, we won’t be upset - “Operation Y” is worth it...

Of course, feature films shot in the Soviet Union had little in common with the surrounding reality. But sometimes only in them you can see the long-changed views of streets, now destroyed houses, interiors, cars, subways, trams, buses and trolleybuses of yesteryear. "Operation Y" is very rich in landscapes, the new buildings of the sixties are especially well photographed...

Oddly enough, the role of the main Khrushchev district in Soviet cinema was played not by the promoted Cheryomushki or other famous new buildings of those years - Kuzminki and Khoroshevo, but by the much more modest Sviblovo, which was not written about in guidebooks then.

PARTNER

Landscape one: Knitting Factory bus stop

So, the film begins with Shurik waiting for a bus in the pouring rain. What kind of bus could you expect in 1965? There wasn’t much variety: either ZIL/LiAZ-158 or ZIS-155. In the first frames of the film we see a ZIL-158. The inscription on the route sign is fictitious: “Bus without a conductor N13 Station - Krikotazhnaya - Zarechye.” Also in the frames there are flashes of the “humpback” and “Volga” GAZ-21. The prototype of the fake bus No. 13 could have been bus No. 267 (now No. 818). It goes from the Kievsky railway station to the Zarechye state farm. On Skolkovskoye Highway, almost at the exit from Moscow, there is a stop “Knitting Factory”.

: “This episode was filmed near house 5/2 on Komsomolsky Prospekt, on a small boulevard leading to the embankment. Buses have never run along it, the stop is fake.

In the foreground you can see house 5/2, built in 1954 with a “native” sign, but a little faded by the 1960s. The bakery existed here until the 1990s, turning into a regular grocery store. However, the word “Bakery” on the sign can still be seen now, in 2006.

In the background is the Church of St. Nicholas in Khamovniki (1679-82), famous for its “leaning” bell tower.

Landscape two: fight on the bus

As we remember, at the stop Shurik got into the ZIL-158, but from the inside we are shown a completely different bus. The director of the film makes a slight substitution: the scenes inside were filmed not in ZIL, but in an earlier one. It is easy to distinguish by the oval windows above the side windows and frames that drop down, like in trains.

Outside the window you can see a curious landscape: small Empire style houses of the first half of the 19th century, and behind them are the buildings of new high-rise buildings. I determined the location after I published this material.

The footage of Verzila lounging in his seat shows an as yet unidentified section of the street within the Kamer-Kollezhsky Val. In the footage with the future mother - Bolshaya Ordynka, the gates of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent, the huge ministry building on the corner with Pyzhevsky Lane flash there.

Another interesting episode: the bus bounces along the street due to the fight taking place inside it. Outside they again show the ZIL-158 with the number 63-31 MMA. In the general plan, in addition to the city bus, two more small buses are noticeable.

Here it is necessary to make a digression. In the 50-60s, there were not enough buses in the country, so many non-core enterprises in the Union republics mastered the production of simple-design, small-capacity buses on the chassis of GAZ trucks. As a rule, the prototype for them was . This is exactly the bus that goes to meet the bus with Shurik and Verzila.

This bus is of Moscow origin: presumably, it was produced by the Aremkuz plant. Behind him is a bus of a more advanced design: a carriage layout - brand "Tajikistan" (you can see its photo from the collection of N. Novikov) with the police number MOM 42-39, made in the corresponding union republic.

Also in the frame flash the Volga GAZ-21 of the second modification (two-color and regular) and the black ZiM GAZ-12

This episode was filmed in Novoluzhnetsky Proezd. The frame clearly shows the now dismantled and rebuilt Krasnoluzhsky bridge of the ring road and the Berezhkovskaya embankment in the Setunsky passages area. The Stalinist houses of Kutuzovsky Prospekt are visible in the distance.

Now the Third Ring Bridge has been built at the place where it was filmed. Notice what kind of lights there were.

Combined shooting was done on Komsomolsky Prospekt, in the area of the current Youth Palace. The book "Problems of Cybernetics" falls out of the bus.

Also visible in the frame is the ZIL-MMZ-164 truck based on the ZIL-164.

Landscape three (and final): police station

The episode at the police station was filmed at Mosfilm. The frame clearly shows a row of monumental post-war buildings, as well as a typical 1960s canopy over the entrance to the newer pavilion. Near a tall wooden fence stands a white 1950s lantern with a loudspeaker attached to it. Standing out from the crowd of prisoners is a dude in a pink tie and fashionable sunglasses, a rumpled young man in a bowtie and a black eye who had been partying at a wedding, a proletarian hooligan in a tattered T-shirt and with a tattoo “I want to go to the Moon” on the then fashionable space theme...

At the police station there is one of the iconic cars that appears in this story - PAZ-653. This is a police van, in which in another episode the “stern policeman” brings lunch to Verzile. The PAZ-653 police special van was based on the GAZ-51 truck chassis and was produced since the early 1950s at the Pavlovsk Bus Plant.

Landscape four: construction

Episodes at the construction site were filmed in at least three places at once: in the Sviblovo district of Moscow (Sedova Street and 2nd Botanichesky Proezd); in the Mosfilm pavilion under construction; in the Odessa district of Cheryomushki, and perhaps in the neighboring Ilyichevsk - it was just being intensively built up in those years.

In this case, in the frame there are five-story buildings 7/2 and 9/2 on Sedova Street and the now demolished two-story building that stood on 2nd Botanichesky Proezd.

While the foreman excitingly tells Verzila about the achievements of “our SMU,” two trucks on the ZIL-164 chassis drive past: the ZIL-MMZ-164AN truck tractor (1961-1965), its earlier modification ZIL-MMZ-164N (1957-1961. ) with a panel trailer and a LAZ-690 truck crane (produced by the Lviv Bus Plant from 1955 to the mid-1960s on the ZiL-164 chassis).

Landscape five: panorama of Sviblovo

This is one of my favorite landscapes in this film. In the frame you can see red-sided five-story buildings, two new five-story schools, houses under construction and Stalinist two-story buildings hiding in the greenery. We wondered about this landscape for a long time until we realized that this was Sviblovo. An Internet check showed the truth of this guess.

In place of the long red-sided five-story buildings N2-10, which recently stood on Sedova Street, red high-rise buildings of the P-44T series have already been erected. The odd side of the street has so far retained the old buildings, but how long this will last is unknown...

The filming was carried out from the roof of the eight-story building No. 3 on Sedova Street (it also appears in the frame in other episodes of the film). In one of the frames, a panorama of the western part of Sviblovo opens in front of us.

On the left side of the screen you can see the house N5/2 under construction, which most often appears in episodes at a construction site. Perpendicular to it is the first floor of building N7/1, which is currently under construction, and currently houses a post office. The twelve-story tower N5/1 currently standing in front of it is not yet in sight.

In the background, on the left side of the screen, you can see the gray five-story building N9/2 under construction and the already built N15/1. Due to its proximity to two-story buildings, it seems a little higher than it actually is.

Between them, the only two-story building that has survived to this day is clearly visible - 2nd Botanichesky Lane, 8. Now it is covered with siding and looks completely different. The clearly visible three-story Stalinist house (9/1) in the center of the frame has also been preserved, and has not changed at all (except for the darkened walls).

On the right side of the screen you can see nearby school buildings (Sedova, N12-14). Behind them you can see the fields beyond the Yauza, which were later turned over to an industrial zone.

In the center of the screen, in a very distant shot, you can see the Sviblovo estate - a white spot of a manor house that has not yet burned down and a dark one of the not yet restored Trinity Church (right under the concrete slab that the crane is dragging).

Landscape six: inside a house under construction

The scene where Verzila and Shurik meet was mainly filmed in the Mosfilm pavilion under construction. While Shurik is sitting in a barrel, and Big Man is stretching the battery, one of the Stalinist film studio buildings is clearly visible through the window. The scenes with the walled-up Shurik, the semicircular staircase and, probably, the “explanatory work” were also filmed at Mosfilm.

Landscape seven: stretcher

In the episode with the stretcher, cement is delivered by a ZIL-MMZ-585 dump truck - a product of the Mytishchi Machine-Building Plant. And while the heroes are figuring out who should go first, a truck crane on a ZIL-164 chassis (presumably a LAZ-690) passes them again.

This episode was filmed at the corner of houses N3 and N5/2 on Sviblovskaya Sedova Street. The brown five-story brick building N5/2 and the gray block five-story building N7/2 are clearly visible in the frame.

Landscape eight: food delivery

A PAZ-653 police van with a siren rushes through the streets, rushing to deliver lunch to a construction site in Sviblovo. Two places flash in the frame: a picturesque hilly intersection with a large number of two-story buildings and a street going down with semi-industrial buildings. Here we had to tinker a lot with determining the location.

The picturesque intersection was approximately localized thanks to the fact that a poster of the Strela cinema (Smolenskaya-Sennaya, 23/25, corner of Ruzheyny Lane) with an advertisement for the film “Short Summer in the Mountains” was caught in the frame. This means that the filming took place somewhere in the vicinity of Smolenskaya. The problem was aggravated by the fact that since the 1960s, constant demolitions had been carried out in this area and only isolated spots remained from the old quarters - there was practically no chance of finding this intersection in any preserved form...

The location of the landscape with the sloping street was calculated using the fail-safe method of herucational deduction.

The nature of the development - a monumental industrial building, a beautiful fence, a two-story pre-revolutionary mansion and constructivist houses in the background - told me that this place was not in the center of Moscow, but, most likely, between the Garden Ring and Kamer-Kollezhsky Val.

There are not so many places with similar slopes in Moscow and they are all located near rivers - the Moskva River, Yauza or Neglinka. Going through different options, I narrowed the possible search area to three areas - Sokolnikov and Preobrazhenka near Yauza, the vicinity of MIIT near Sushchevsky Val, and the Khamovniki and Smolenka area.

The last area was the most preferable - I already knew that a number of episodes were filmed there.

Finding a suitable lane on the map was already a matter of technology. Arriving at 2nd Truzhennikov Lane, I immediately recognized the place where the operator’s camera stood. Although the pre-revolutionary two-story house was built with a third floor, and a multi-story building was erected in the middle of the alley, the alley still remained recognizable.

Immediately after I found the second filming location, I came across the first one - it was the junction of the 1st and 2nd Vrazhsky lanes with the 7th Rostovsky. From the cozy corner of Moscow from the time of Shurik and Verzila, all that remains here is a four-story house on a hillock, a fence (without a poster) and noticeably grown poplars. All the old two-story buildings were demolished.

Scene nine: lunch

The heroes no longer have to dine in Moscow, but in Odessa. You can clearly see the rustic-looking five-story buildings, not covered with “metropolitan” ceramic tiles, and the wasteland, where construction is taking place, turning into the steppe.

Landscape ten: chase

Finally, the famous Gaidaev chase begins, using construction equipment that came to hand.

Odessa. Before the chase starts

Sviblovo. Lift at building 3 on Sedova Street

Odessa. Balconies

Sviblovo. Balconies

Mosfilm. Ladder

Sviblovo. Jump into bitumen

Odessa. In bitumen

Sviblovo. On the corner of houses 7/1 and 5/2 on Sedova Street

Sviblovo. On the corner of houses 5/2 and 3 on Sedova Street

Sviblovo. Lift at house 5/2 on Sedova street

Odessa. Pipe

The “chase” involves a D-686 bulldozer based on the S-100 tractor from the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant.

The footage with the bulldozer was filmed at another construction site - this can be seen from the panel, not block, five-story buildings.

The episode with the shower and the “native” was filmed on a vast field, which was in 1964 on the site of the current kindergarten on Sedova, 9/1. The five-story block building N7/2 is clearly visible in the frame.

Sviblovo. Striped five-story building N5/2.

Sviblovo. Striped five-story building N5/2, block five-story building N7/2 and three-story building 9/1 in the background.

Sviblovo. Striped five-story building N5/2.

Landscape one: "Polytechnic Institute"

The filmmakers “made” this landscape out of several, filmed in completely different places.

The “Polytechnic Institute,” as people who well remember Moscow in the 1960s told me, is the Institute of Organoelement Compounds of the Russian Academy of Sciences. A.N. Nesmeyanova (INEOS) on Vavilova Street, 28 (the building was built in 1962). In this scene, it is also worth paying attention to the stylish Kharkov soda fountains - red, with chrome parts.

In the INEOS yard, little has changed since 1964. But when the camera looks outward from the institute’s courtyard, the view opens not onto Vavilova Street (there was and is a stylish, but for the film, rather boring motor depot “Akademavtotrans”), but on some kind of almost resort landscape.

The "resort" path near the institute was filmed at Mosfilm. I made this simple conclusion after watching the episode multiple times: in one of the frames I was able to see a small pond and a fence behind it in the background. I had to remember for a long time where such a place could be in Moscow, until I realized that I had seen such a pond right next to the film studio.

Without leaving the house, I was able to definitively confirm this version by checking the site plan and the dating of the houses. An earlier looking house opposite the pond is Mosfilmovskaya, 6 (1957).

A typical building of the late 1950s with a slogan on the roof is Mosfilmovskaya, 2, built in 1958.

But the spreading tree, convenient for studying notes, was filmed, apparently, in Yalta.

Another clearly recognizable place is a sculpture of a student with a book near the main building of Moscow State University, from whom Shurik is trying to pry the answers to the exam. When the statue is shown, a ZIL/LIAZ-158 bus is visible in the background. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good screenshot with it.

Landscape two: tram

"Obsession" is a romantic novella. And since it is romantic, then it has the most romantic type of transport - the elegant Tatra-3 tram.

The Tatra-3 car, N530, filmed in the film was assigned to the Baumansky depot, located on Selskokhozyaystvennaya Street, not far from VDNKh. It was there - in the 1st Agricultural Passage, next to the place where the now destroyed Museum of Urban Transport was located in the late 1990s - and this episode was filmed.

Tatra N530 was one of the first batches of Czech trams that arrived in Moscow: with narrow windows, two doors, and a wide route indicator. There are no longer two-door Tatras left in Moscow, but they still run in some Russian cities: The N5 route sign mounted on the carriage is a fake. It has the same simple route “Station - Zarechye” written on it as on the bus from “Partners”.

Notice how picturesquely the chimney smokes behind Selskokhozyaistnaya Street - they are probably burning coal. Shurik and Lida board the tram near house 5 on 1st Selskokhozyaystvenny Proezd, and get off almost around the corner - at house No. 2 on Sergei Eisenshtein Street (house No. 129 on Prospekt Mira is visible in the background).

In the next frame they are already walking along Borby Square, which is not far from the Novoslobodskaya metro station. House No. 11 on Perunovsky Lane is clearly visible in the background. This place hasn’t changed very much in forty years - except that a monument to the heroes of Venedikt Erofeev’s story “Moscow-Petushki” was erected in the park.

The MTV-82A tram, the most common Moscow tram of those years, travels across the square. Pay attention to its coloring. This is the classic original livery of these cars. Subsequently the standard was changed and they were repainted. The last MTV trams left the streets of Moscow in the early 80s.

In the same episode, a van comes into view. Most likely, it was made at the Mosavtotrans ARZ and bears the index U-122. The coloring of this "lawn" is typical of the sixties: white and blue.

Landscape three: hatches

This short episode should be described separately. Although we don’t know the exact location, there is a very strong suspicion that it was filmed in Yalta. Pay attention to the pre-revolutionary house with double balconies in the shot of Lida, who saw Shurik fall into the hatch: there are no such things either in Moscow or in St. Petersburg.

Landscape four: pedestrian crossing

In the episode where Shurik and Lida “blindly” cross the street, enthusiastically reading the notes, we see Volgas of the first and second editions, as well as the RAF-977B. A little later, the handsome ZIM with white tire rims is added to the Volga.

When Shurik and Lida cross this passage a second time, there are already much more cars there. Basically, these are the same Volgas, but the RAF is a different color, and the ZIM has regular tires and taxi checkers on the side.

In the shot with a pedestrian crossing and an old traffic light there is a place unknown to us. Perhaps this is a university park on the Lenin Hills. Another assumption is that the filming took place not in Moscow, but in Odessa or Yalta.

Crossing the street - Moscow, boulevards between Moscow State University and the observation deck of the Lenin Mountains.

Landscape five: crowd with books