# Soviet films set in the West **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 9, 2013, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624 "2013-01-09T13:24:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/1 "2013-01-09T13:24:08Z")
There’s no shortage of Hollywood films set in the Soviet Union. (Popular ones which come to mind include _The Hunt for Red October_, _Rocky IV_, _Gorky Park_, and _Red Heat_.) However, I don’t know of too many Soviet films set in America, or anywhere else in the English-speaking West, for that matter. I’m aware of only _[A Man from the Boulevard des Capuchines](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092745/)_ (a comedy set in the American Wild West) and _[The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Sherlock_Holmes_and_Dr._Watson)_ series (set in Victorian Britain, as the name suggests). Does anyone know of any others? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/2 "2013-01-09T13:39:03Z")
[Don Quixote](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quixote_(1957_film)) The same director also did **Hamlet** and **King Lear.** ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/3 "2013-01-09T13:59:05Z")
**RealityChuck** , I don’t think any of those three films are set in English-speaking areas, though admittedly they do take place in what later became first-world countries. Interestingly, out of the nine films mentioned so far, none of them are set later than 1917. It would be interesting if no films set in the West were ever set in a time period contemporaneous with the USSR itself. ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/4 "2013-01-09T14:20:42Z")
“Desyat’ Negrityat”, the 1987 Soviet movie version of Agatha Christie’s “And then there were none” (although this version keeps the original, politically-incorrect title in Russian). It is also the BEST version of that story ever filmed, and the only one (to my knowledge) that keeps the story as published in the novel exactly as-is, or almost. IMDB link: [Ten Little Indians (1987) - IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092879/) This movie is definitely set after 1917 – it keeps the vague “Christie Time” 1930s setting. ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/5 "2013-01-09T14:30:23Z")
Missed edit window – if we accept animated films, then we have “Tir” (“Shooting Range”, 1979) – a surreal (and rather propagandistic) movie set in the contemporary USA where an unemployed young man ends up accepting a job as a living target in a shooting gallery. Critic of capitalism, etc. Relevant links: > **[Tir (Short 1979) - IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1240975/)** > > Tir: Directed by Vladimir Tarasov. A desperately unemployed American youth finds work from an insane employer. > **[Shooting Range (film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_Range_%28film%29)** > > Shooting Range (Russian: Тир) is a 1979 Soviet animation film directed by Vladimir Tarasov. The film is twenty-one minutes long and is set to jazz music. It is a satirical critique of capitalism and life in the United States. > In New York City, an unemployed young man (Based on Holden Caulfield) finds a job in a shooting gallery as a living target. After a while, the man falls in love and lives in the gallery with his wife at gunpoint. Finally, they give birth to baby, and the shooting range owne... (Edited to add: link to the wikipedia article on the movie mentioned in my previous post: [Desyat Negrityat - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desyat_negrityat) ) ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/6 "2013-01-09T16:45:32Z")
Yet another! (sorry for the triple-posting :P) “Gonka Veka” (“The Race of the Century”, 1986), which is an account of the “Sunday Times Golden Globe Race” of 1968-1969 (non-stop solo circumnavigation of the world), focusing on doomed sailor Donald Crowhurst. The setting is the UK in the late 1960s, and the movie (of course) criticizes capitalist society for pushing people into an inhuman “rat race” for the money. Information about this movie is not easy to find in English. There is a mention to it in the Wikipedia article on Donald Crowhurst: > **[Donald Crowhurst](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Crowhurst)** > > Donald Charles Alfred Crowhurst (1932 – July 1969) was a British businessman and amateur sailor who disappeared while competing in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a single-handed, round-the-world yacht race held in 1968–69. Soon after starting the race his boat, the Teignmouth Electron, began taking on water. Crowhurst secretly abandoned the race while reporting false positions in an attempt to appear to complete a circumnavigation without actually doing so. His ship's logbooks, found afte... And an article about the movie itself in the [Russian language wikipedia.](http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%93%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%BA%D0%B0_%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%BA%D0%B0) (Maybe if a moderator could merge my three posts into one…?) ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/7 "2013-01-09T18:55:23Z")
East Germany made alot of Westerns there were told from the Indians’ point of view. ---
**Author:** ![Jormungandr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@Jormungandr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jormungandr)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/8 "2013-01-09T22:14:37Z")
> [@JoseB](#): > > (Edited to add: link to the wikipedia article on the movie mentioned in my previous post: [Desyat Negrityat - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desyat_negrityat) ) Hmm…the article says it retained the original title, "Ten Little N\*gg\*\*s,"which seems so according to the the anglicized name, but Google Translate gives the Cyrillic as “Ten Little Indians.” ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/9 "2013-01-10T01:18:43Z")
> [@Jormungandr](#): > > Hmm…the article says it retained the original title, "Ten Little N\*gg\*\*s,"which seems so according to the the anglicized name, but Google Translate gives the Cyrillic as “Ten Little Indians.” Don’t believe Google translate – I speak Russian; the title as-is in Russian means exactly “ten little n-word”. However, “negrityat” doesn’t have the connotations that “n\*\*\*\*\*\*” has in English – In Russian it simply means “black men (with the diminutive ending)”. “Negr” in Russian is the standard way to say “a black man”. As a matter of fact, if you only put the second word in Google translate (негритят) you will see that it gives the translation “Negro”. If we input a different number instead of ten (Десять), for instance “five” (пять негритят), the translation given is “Five Negro”. It appears that the programmers of Google translate must have hard-coded “Десять негритят” identifying it as the name of the Agatha Christie novel – Ironically giving the still somewhat offensive “Ten Little Indians” title. Quite interesting…! ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/10 "2013-01-10T02:01:28Z")
When I was in language school, I did see a Soviet adaptation of a contemporary American novel, set in New York. It was actually done quite well, though the production designer should have paid closer attention to his resource materials (hand-painted signs, f’rinstance, were obviously done by non-native English speakers). I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the film (I think it was a made-for-TV movie), but it was about five or six Vietnam vets reuniting for a heist. One of the vets was dying of Agent Orange; another, IIRC, was named “Gyppo.” It had to have been made in the 1985–89 time frame. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/11 "2013-01-10T09:35:49Z")
> [@JoseB](#): > > It appears that the programmers of Google translate must have hard-coded “Десять негритят” identifying it as the name of the Agatha Christie novel – Ironically giving the still somewhat offensive “Ten Little Indians” title. Unlikely. Google Translate uses statistical machine translation, meaning it looks for patterns of cooccurrences of words and phrases across texts in different languages. It’s mapping “Десять негритят” to “Ten Little Indians” because those phrases occur in similar contexts on the web—namely, to describe the same book. ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/12 "2013-01-10T11:31:38Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > Unlikely. Google Translate uses statistical machine translation, meaning it looks for patterns of cooccurrences of words and phrases across texts in different languages. It’s mapping “Десять негритят” to “Ten Little Indians” because those phrases occur in similar contexts on the web—namely, to describe the same book. Ignorance fought! 🙂 Thanks for the information. Incidentally, There is a VERY famous Soviet comedy that happens partly in an unspecified “foreign” country and involves the antics of a gang of diamond smugglers trying to recover their cargo that was unwittingly taken by a Soviet tourist that was going back home. “The diamond arm”, it’s called. Very funny movie, but I guess it doesn’t fulfill the conditions of the OP 🙂 (Speaking of it, **psychonaut** , what do you think of the examples so far?) ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/13 "2013-01-10T11:54:24Z")
> [@JoseB](#): > > (Speaking of it, **psychonaut** , what do you think of the examples so far?) I think it’s a shame I can’t find any subtitles for _Gonka Veka_ in any language I speak, as it’ll probably be several years before I learn enough Russian to understand it. Fortunately there’s no such problem with _Desyat negrityat_ and I’ve added it to my list of films to see. _Tir_ sounds dire—I have a collection of Soviet animated propaganda films and they’re pretty uniformly boring. Thanks to everyone for their contributions so far. If anyone knows of any more please keep them coming! ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/14 "2013-01-10T13:24:42Z")
There are two Russian versions of Jules Verne’s **In Search of the Castaways** / **The Children of Captain Grant**. They’re purportedly better than the version Disney released in the early 1960s (that version wasn’t paricularly faithful to Verne), but I haven’t seen either of them. I understand the music composed for the earlier one was incredibly popular, and is still being played and is easily recocnizable (kinda like John Williams’ film scores). Of course, it’s not set in the US, but all of the scenes are supposed to be outside of Russia. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/15 "2013-01-10T13:46:27Z")
**CalMeacham** , your reference to Disney movies reminds me of [Soyuzmultfilm’s adaptations of A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stories](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqdiEUp6s4E). The original stories, at least, are set in Ashdown Forest in Britain. I’ve seen parts of the films and don’t remember if they explicitly mention this setting, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t _re-set_ it anywhere else. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/16 "2013-01-10T14:33:35Z")
> [@JoseB](#): > > There is a VERY famous Soviet comedy that happens partly in an unspecified “foreign” country and involves the antics of a gang of diamond smugglers trying to recover their cargo that was unwittingly taken by a Soviet tourist that was going back home. “The diamond arm”, it’s called. Very funny movie. _Brilliantovaya ruka_. According to my sources, it was filmed in Turkey. It’s been some years since I saw it, but I got the impression it took place in Bulgaria, during a typically Soviet Black Sea cruise. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/17 "2013-01-10T14:35:50Z")
Here, BTW, is the theme to the Sherlock Holmes series. A very catchy tune! [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35hYseN0w6A) ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/18 "2013-01-10T15:30:58Z")
I see from [the Wikipedia article on Soyuzmultfilm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuzmultfilm) that they’ve adapted a number of children’s stories and fairy tales set in the (non-anglophone) West. There are a couple films about the Bremen town musicians, one about the Little Mermaid set in Copenhagen, and an Astrid Lindgren work set in Stockholm. There’s also an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s books, which presumably takes place in British colonial India. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/soviet-films-set-in-the-west/646624/19 "2013-01-11T07:51:20Z")
_Shooting Range_ was pretty weird, but actually had a much more straightforward plot than the Wikipedia article led me to believe. (Also, the director owes Disney shit-tons of money).