Unbelievable Adventures of Italians in Russia (1974) on Netflix
In a Rome hospital, a dying woman tells her granddaughter Olga that a treasure lies buried under a lion in Leningrad. Several who hear the story set out to find it first.
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- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.5/107,038 votes
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Trailer
Plot summary
Olga's grandmother, a Russian émigré of ninety-two, lies close to death in a Rome hospital and tells her granddaughter about a treasure worth nine billion lire that she buried beneath a lion in Leningrad. Others in the room take in the story as well: the physician attending her, two male nurses, Antonio and Giuseppe, the mafioso Rosario, and a patient whose leg is broken. Each of them flies to Leningrad to hunt for the hoard on his own account. The single clue points to a lion, and the city holds many lion statues. Olga intends to keep the treasure for herself. Andrei, a captain in the Soviet militsiya, goes undercover and offers his services to Antonio as a tour guide.
Cast
- Franca Sciuttoas Rosario's wife
- Bruno Boschetti
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Unbelievable Adventures of Italians in Russia (1974)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Berberov family's lion King was not shot dead during filming, as some sources claim: by then all its scenes had been completed, and it was killed by Alexander Gurov, then a simple lieutenant, after it jumped through a window and attacked a student near Mosfilm.
- The film was made because Dino De Laurentiis owed Mosfilm money after co-producing Sergei Bondarchuk's Waterloo and suggested repaying it by producing a light, cheap comedy; that is when Ryazanov and Braginsky were contacted.
- Eldar Ryazanov avoided compositing and used only practical effects; the hardest scene, a plane landing on an M1 highway among passing cars as a parody of The Sicilian Clan, was shot at Ulyanovsk Baratayevka Airport disguised as a highway because no road surface was hard enough, with pilot Ivan Tarashan performing the stunt.
- Ryazanov originally planned a film in the vein of Cops and Robbers and his own Beware of the Car, with Alberto Sordi as a small Italian fraud and Innokenty Smoktunovsky as a Russian policeman, but the Italian co-authors rejected the idea as old-fashioned and sentimental.
- For the lion, Ryazanov called on Baku engineer Lev Berberov, who raised wild animals in his flat and insisted on more scenes for King, but the animal was untrained, ignored everyone and scratched Ninetto Davoli during its first scene, terrifying the cast.
- Dino De Laurentiis rejected Braginsky and Ryazanov's second screenplay and made them rewrite everything except the scenes with a living lion; the final script was inspired by It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, which Ryazanov watched the same night at his hotel.
- Most of the car-chase stunts were performed by Italian racer and stuntman Sergio Mioni, while Andrei Mironov and Ninetto Davoli did risky tricks themselves, including the moveable-bridge scene where Davoli made a long jump with a suitcase and Mironov hung from the bridge for a close-up.
