Love and Pigeons (1985) on Netflix
Vasily Kuzyakin breeds pigeons in a Siberian village, to his wife Nadezhda's annoyance. After a work injury he is sent to a Black Sea resort, where Raisa Zakharovna fascinates him.
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- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.8/106,527 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
Vasily Kuzyakin works in forestry and lives in a village with his wife Nadezhda and their three children: Lyudka, who returned from the city after an unsuccessful marriage; Lyonka, who is interested in technology; and Olya, the youngest. He keeps pigeons and spends family money on expensive birds, which Nadezhda reproaches him for. Next door live baba Shura and uncle Mitya, whose household runs on quarrels and on Mitya's attempts to drink without his wife noticing. Hurt on the job, Vasily is given a trip to the seaside for treatment. There he meets Raisa Zakharovna, an employee of the personnel department of his own forestry enterprise, who tells him about psychics, telekinesis and astral bodies. A holiday romance begins.
Cast
- Mikhail Kolesnikovas beer enthusiast (uncredited)
- Vyatcheslav Maneshinas (uncredited)
Show all 13 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Love and Pigeons (1985)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While filming the scene where Vasily falls out of his house door into the sea, Alexander Mikhailov almost died: he fell from the pier in Kobuleti, divers undressed him underwater and he surfaced beside Lyudmila Gurchenko in his underpants, and when a diver could not untie his tie it had to be cut.
- The play and film came from the real family of Vasily and Nadezhda Kuzyakin, who lived in Cheremkhovo in the Irkutsk region, the home town of screenwriter Vladimir Gurkin, and the neighbours Mitya and Shura were based on Gurkin's own grandparents.
- For the shot of a blossoming tree, a magician attached ten trick canes that shoot out flowers to an ordinary tree; only seven worked at the same time, but the shot was completed on the first take.
- Alexander Mikhailov initially refused the role of Vasily Kuzyakin. Nikolai Lavrov, Boris Morchkov, Viktor Bortsov and Sergei Yursky also auditioned for the part, and Yursky was instead approved as Uncle Mitya.
- Eduard Uspensky wrote two songs for the film. "Burning Southern Tango" is performed in it by Sergei Menakhin, while the second, "Come home, men!", with music by Grigory Gladkov, was left out by director Vladimir Menshov.
- In 2011 a monument to the heroes of the film, made by sculptor Karim Mukhamadeev, was erected in the Siberian town of Cheremkhov.
- The main scenes were shot in a private house, No. 12 on Nizhnyaya Street on the outskirts of Medvezhyegorsk in Karelia, on the bank of the river Kumsa; the house was demolished after a fire in 2011, and in 2018 the owner of the cottage built there restored a dovecote on the same spot.
