Is it worth a bet?

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Movie
German title Is it worth a bet?
Original title Девчата
(Dewchata)
Country of production USSR
original language Russian
Publishing year 1961
length 99 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Yuri Chulyukin
script Boris Bedny
production Mosfilm
music Alexandra Pakhmutova
camera Timofej Lebeschew
occupation
synchronization

Is it worth a bet? (Alternative title: Such a girl ; Original title: Девчата , Dewtschata ) is a Soviet feature film directed by Yuri Tschuljukin from 1961 based on a novel by Boris Bedny .

action

The film is set in an isolated Russian forestry company in the late 1950s. A young girl with a ponytail, Tossja, has just finished cooking school and joins a group of other women who support the forestry company's lumberjacks . Tossja's naivete shows in the first exchange, during which the officer who leads her to her quarters seems annoyed when he discovers that she has not brought a pillow. Tossja is assigned to be the cook for the camp.

Once in her dormitory-like room, she happily prepares a meal of tea and a huge loaf of bread with jam, all from the food supplies of her roommates. When the four other girls return after a day at work, they are impressed by Tossja's youth and good nature. However, a woman is upset that she is eating her food without permission and an argument ensues.

In this scene one sees another characteristic of Tossja for the first time: her ferocity. When the roommate makes some rude remarks, Tossja throws a boot at her head without hesitation. This trait can also be seen a short time later, when Tossja enters the dance hall - called "club" by the girls. At first, nobody wants to dance with her - probably because she is so small - but eventually she begins to dance with another very tall girl who is also passed over by several young men.

Meanwhile, two groups of loggers get into a friendly dispute: One has just lost its position as the most productive group in the camp, and an officer removes her portraits from a "wall of honor" and replaces them with pictures of the rival group. The leaders of the two groups are playing checkers , and in order to concentrate, Ilya - the leader of the group who has just been honored with her portraits on the wall - calls out that the music should be turned off. A very large and imposing companion carries out his wish. But Tossja, who is enjoying her dance, walks over to the phonograph and turns the music on again. Ilja demands that the music be switched off again, and Tossja seems to be ready, to the delight of the audience, to take on this giant in order to keep the music going.

Impressed by Tossja's persistence, Ilya comes up to her and invites her to dance. After telling him to throw away his cigarette and take off his hat first, she announces that she doesn't want to dance with "guys like you".

After this incident, Ilya, deeply humiliated, bets Filja, the leader of the rival group, that he can win Tossja's heart within a week. The winner gets the other's hat. Ilya and his gang quickly forge a plan: They want to first insult Tossja for her cooking skills in order to break her. The gang throws Tossja's stew in a dramatic way in the snow, declaring it inedible and bringing her to tears. Despite this bad treatment, Tossja brought the men to their place of work in the forest a few days later. The starving men can no longer resist, and Ilya and Tossja begin to show real affection for one another.

The viewer can watch Tossja fall in love with Ilya, and her cheering gestures, including her dancing in her pajamas after a particularly pleasant walk, her beaming eyes, her smile and her singing, show the childhood love in the heart of a young girl. It also turns out that Tossja is an orphan and that Ilya is interested in finding ways to increase logging productivity through new techniques and technologies.

One night Tossja's angry roommate tells the other girls about the bet Ilya made, and a discussion ensues about whether or not to tell Tossja about it. The other girls want to keep Tossja's trust in men and love alive. However, when Ilya Tossja asks for a big dance, the girls decide that they have to tell her the truth. A heartbreaking scene follows in which Tossja asks softly: “And the bet was only for a hat?” Within a few minutes, her despair turns into indignation and she marches to the dance. When they reach the dance floor after calling Filja over, she asks him bluntly if there was a bet. When he shyly admits that there was one, she grabs Filja's hat and shoves it into Ilya's hands. Then she runs out into the night without a coat and sobs behind a pile of wood while Ilya looks for her and calls her name.

In the weeks that followed Ilya tried to convince her that the bet was just a stupid prank, that he was sorry and that he really loved her. But Tossja cannot be changed that easily. She's too hurt to trust him, and the rest of the film leaves audiences hoping to see them again, even though Tossja seems completely unforgivable.

But finally, during a scene in which the entire camp steps in to build a house for a newly married couple, Tossja and Ilja find themselves in an attic, each with a box of nails. This moment leads to their reconciliation and towards the end of the film the viewer sees the two cuddling on a tree trunk outside, flirting with their first kiss and talking about their future.

production

While preparing for the film, Yuri Chulyukin promised his wife Natalia Kustinskaya the role of Tossja. Kustinskaya began to seriously prepare for the audition and waited for the decision of the Art Council. After a while, she learned from a cameraman with whom she was known that filming had already started and that Nadezhda Rumyanzeva was in the lead role. Chulyukin justified himself by saying that the Art Council considered Kustinskaya too beautiful for the character of Tossja, and offered her the role of Anfissa as a reconciliation, but Kustinskaya declined.

According to the script, Tossja is 18 years old. At the time of filming, Rumyantseva was already 30 years old. As intended by the director, Ilya looks much older than Tossja on the screen, but in reality the actors Rybnikov and Rumyantseva are the same age.

Locations

The scenes in the lumberjack village were filmed in the Mosfilm pavilions and in Mosfilmovskaya , where around three hundred trees were planted and a village backdrop with the sign “Lespromchos” was built. Actual shooting began in the Middle Urals in the Chusovoy region in the village of Bobrovka in Perm Oblast . In the scene in which the characters are looking at a newspaper with the photo of Ilya, the name “Tschusowskoi rabotschi” is clearly visible. However, as the shooting turned out to be difficult in 30 degrees of frost, after a few short scenes the crew continued work on a forestry operation in Olenino in Tver Oblast , and the last shot was shot in Yalta .

The train scene was filmed in Ryazan Oblast on the route between Spas-Klepiki and Pilewo stations .

publication

The premiere of the comedy Is it worth a bet? took place on March 7, 1962 in the Central House of Cinema in Moscow . Everyone who was involved in the making of the film came to the premiere, with the exception of actress Inna Makarowa , who played the role of Nadja. She was offended by the fact that during the editing process the director removed from the film a scene in which her character breaks up with the groom Ksan Ksanych, whom she does not love.

The Soviet authorities described the comedy as "too banal and thin for the Soviet screen," so the film was classified in the third rental category. However, the audience and critics immediately liked the film, and it became one of the leading titles in Soviet film distribution. In 1962, the year of the USSR premiere, it was seen by almost 35 million people.

The film was released in GDR cinemas on September 14, 1962 . In the Federal Republic of the film on May 3, 1963 ran in theaters for the first time. The first broadcast on German television (DFF) took place on October 3, 1965 under the title So ein Mädel .

synchronization

The dialogue book for the DEFA synchronization was written by Harald Thiemann , and Lisa Honigmann was in charge of the direction .

role actor Voice actor
Tossja Kislitsyna Nadezhda Rumyantseva Monika Lennartz
Ilya Kovrigin Nikolai Rybnikov Horst Weinheimer
Katja Lyussjena Ovchinnikova Ingeborg Krabbe
Anfissa Pavlovna Svetlana Druzhinina Johanna Clas
Nadja Yerochina Inna Makarova Ursula Mundt
Wera Kruglowa ("Mama Wera") Nina Menshikova Henny Müller
Filja Yegorov Stanislav Chitrov Dieter Perlwitz
Saschka Powarow Nikolai Pogodin Willi Schrade
Ksan Kzanych Viktor Baikov Hans-Joachim Hanisch
Vadim Dementiev Anatoly Adoskin Karl Heinz Oppel
Dorm Commandant Mikhail Pugovkin Heinz-Werner Pätzold
Alexei Churkin Pyotr Kirjutkin Heinz Scholz
Alyosha Velikanov Alexei Krychenkov Peer hunter

reception

The lexicon of international films called Is It Worth a Bet? an "entertaining, fresh comedy with a solid staging and good performance."

Horst Knietzsch writes in Neues Deutschland that the story of the “cheerful” film is “filled with delicious punch lines and lots of humor.” Knietzsch praises the actress Nadezhda Rumjanzewa as having a “great comedic talent” and then writes about her: “Directed by Juri Tschuljukin burns off a firework of good humor and unclouded pleasure, from the first defeat to the happy outcome of this cheerful film. "

Awards

Festival Internacional de Cine de Mar del Plata 1962

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Как снимали фильм «Девчата». Сегодня вечером. Выпуск от 22.03.2014 . Channel One Russia.
  2. ↑ Сибирские морозы в фильме "Девчата" снимали в разгар лета . Komsomolskaya Pravda .
  3. ↑ From the television film program. In: Berliner Zeitung . September 29, 1965, accessed June 6, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Film Details: DJEWTSCHATA (1961). In: DEFA Foundation . Retrieved June 6, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Is it worth a wager? In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed June 6, 2020 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  6. ↑ Kobold am Köchtopf - “Such a girl”, a delicious Soviet film fun game. In: New Germany . September 20, 1962, accessed June 6, 2020 .