5 facts about Russia's main New Year's Eve movie (STILLS)

For half a century, audiences have been rooting for the main characters, who meet by chance, singing the song about "the train [that] will start moving, but the platform will remain" and "white handkerchiefs" and joyfully repeating the aphorism about jellied fish. It seems – how much longer can this go on? But, every year on December 31, Russians turn the television on again, where these familiar scenes will appear…

1. The movie might never have existed

Director Eldar Ryazanov said that the plot of the movie arose from a prank he overheard somewhere. On December 31, someone went to a ‘banya’ (bathhouse), drank and then went to congratulate his friends on their wedding anniversary. From there, already drunk, a prankster drives him to Kiev Railway Station. Officials at ‘Goskino’ strongly disliked the script, which revolved around a severely intoxicated protagonist, who also behaves defiantly and boorishly after waking up in a stranger's apartment. A Soviet citizen couldn't behave like that. However, it was accepted on television and given permission to film a two-part movie.

2. Popular actors weren't cast

Choosing the leading roles proved challenging. Ryazanov considered practically everyone. He considered the then-popular Andrei Mironov, Oleg Dal, Stanislav Lyubshin, as well as Pyotr Velyaminov for the role of Zhenya Lukashin. But, the role went to Andrei Myagkov. Leading Soviet diva Lyudmila Gurchenko and Svetlana Nemolayeva considered playing Nadya Sheveleva, but the director chose Polish actress Barbara Brylska after seeing her in the movie ‘Anatomy of Love’ (1972).

3. 3rd Stroiteley Street didn't exist in Moscow at the time

A key element of the plot is the confusion of addresses and typical buildings, so indistinguishable that an intoxicated man easily mistakes a schoolteacher's Leningrad apartment for his Moscow apartment, where he lives with his mother. Interestingly, there was no 3rd Stroiteley Street in the Soviet capital at the time: it had been renamed Maria Ulyanova Street back in 1963. The typical buildings were substituted by the facades of two panel buildings on Vernadsky Prospekt, built according to an experimental design. There were three of them on this street and they couldn't even be called typical by any stretch of the imagination. The 16-story panel buildings, each with five entrances, were built according to a custom design, using experimental technologies and materials. They were used to test out the basic apartment types, including their finishes and equipment.

4. Residents of the houses in the movie kept their lights on

Incidentally, residents of the house on Vernadsky Prospekt, where the Leningrad scenes were filmed, unwittingly became participants in the movie. To preserve the atmosphere of New Year's Eve, residents were asked to keep their lights on while filming. It's hard to imagine the windows of their houses remaining dark on such a holiday.

5. Alla Pugacheva sings in the movie

One of the driving forces behind the movie's plot is the music, composed by Mikael Tariverdiev. Eight romances based on the poems of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Bella Akhmadulina, Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva and other poets are performed by star Alla Pugacheva and singer Sergei Nikitin. Interestingly, their names were initially uncredited, leading viewers to mistakenly believe Myagkov and Brylska were singing themselves.