History
The director, Vladimir Motyl, said such films as Stagecoach and High Noon influenced him and he has described the film as being a "cocktail" of both an adventurous Russian folktale and a western. Initially several directors, including Andrei Tarkovsky and Andrei Konchalovsky, were offered the film but they turned it down, Motyl claims, for two main reasons. Firstly, Konchalovsky thought only American actors could pull off the part of a lead role in a western, and secondly the screenplay was considered weak. Motyl was offered the screenplay and decided to make the best of his chance. He consequently rewrote a large part of the screenplay, and all the dialogue for Pavel Luspekaev's character, Vereshchagin, was written immediately before shooting began. The screenwriters published a book under the same title. A Russian computer game was released based on the film. In 1998, the creators of the film were awarded the 1997 Russian Federation State Prize in Literature and Arts, nearly 30 years after the film left the silver screen.
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