Synopsis
12 Chairs (1971) is Leonid Gaidai's two-part comedy you can watch online on iFILM, adapted from the celebrated Ilf and Petrov novel. Archil Gomiashvili plays the smooth con man Ostap Bender.
Ippolit Vorobyaninov (Sergei Filippov), a former provincial aristocrat now scraping by under Soviet rule, hears a dying secret from his mother-in-law: diamonds worth 150,000 rubles are sewn into one of twelve dining chairs by the master craftsman Gambs. The catch is that the set was split up and scattered across the country years ago. Vorobyaninov joins forces with the charming swindler Bender to chase the chairs down, while the treasure-hungry priest Father Fyodor (Mikhail Pugovkin) races them to the prize.
Gaidai's film arrived before Mark Zakharov's musical TV version and wins on tempo, sight gags and a parade of beloved faces — Yuri Nikulin, Georgy Vitsin and Savely Kramarov pop up in tiny roles. Whole lines from it slipped into everyday Russian speech. It's for anyone who wants the Soviet comedy classic in full rather than chopped into clips. Stream 12 Chairs (1971) online on iFILM.
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