Operation Y and Other Shurik's Adventures - Production

Production

• The film was shot in Leningrad, Odessa, Yalta, Mosfilm pavilions, Sviblovo district of Moscow and near the Moscow State University. The filming was started on July 27, 1964. In October bad weather in Moscow hindered completing the outdoors scenes, so the shooting was relocated in Odessa and was complete on November 22. The rest of the scenes were shot in Moscow and Leningrad. The lack of snow offered much difficulty filming the third episode about the burglary of a warehouse on a snowy winter night. In spring 1965 the editing of the film was mostly complete. The remaining short location shooting was made in Yalta.
• The film's plot is based loosely on a screenplay written by Moris Slobodskoy and Yakov Kostyukovsky entitled Light-hearted Stories (Russian: Несерьёзные истории); it consisted of two novels about comical adventures of a young student Vladik Arkov, clumsy but very decent. A character of a "good guy" was popular in the Soviet art of that time, so Gaidai decided to follow this tendency shooting his next film. The story line was modified and the additional novel was written.
• More than hundred actors took a screen test for the role of the student Vladik, but Gaidai was not satisfied with any of them. He had his own personality in mind as a prototype of the character, so when he first saw a photo of Aleksandr Demyanenko and then met him in person, he noticed the likeness to himself in the actor, and believed that the humble Demyanenko in glasses would be able to portray the awkward, naive and honest student best of all.
• Initially the name of the main character was Vladik (short for Vladislav). Later the director, impressed by Demyanenko, decided to name the characted after the actor (Shurik, as well as Sasha, is a short form of the name Aleksandr).
• Among those who took part in the audition for the main role was actor Valery Nosik. Eventually he appeared in the film as a student-gambler. Mikhail Pugovkin, who played the role of the construction site manager, was initially cast for the role of Fedya.
• At the session of the Art Council after the preliminary watching of the film critics panned the acting of Morgunov and Vitsin, while praising Nikulin, and were insisting on deleting scenes where Alexei Smirnov appears in blackface. However, no changes were made.