Passport

Despite the skeptical voices heard almost every year, the picture Eldara Ryazanova “Irony of Fate or Enjoy Your Bath!” remains a symbol of the most beloved holiday.

One New Year’s Eve…

Back in 1969, regular collaborators Emil Braginsky and Eldar Ryazanov wrote the play “Enjoy Your Bath! or Once Upon a New Year’s Eve…”, which was successfully performed on the stages of several theaters in the country.

A few years later, the director decided to transfer it to the silver screen, but did not want to make significant cuts to the plot. However, the leaders of the domestic film industry did not want to approve the two-part film about the adventures of a doctor who loves baths.

Then Ryazanov turned to the management of Central Television. There they reacted more favorably to the idea, and on January 1, 1976, television viewers saw for the first time the story of Zhenya Lukashin and Nadya Sheveleva.

The success of “Irony…” turned out to be so colossal that the shortened version was released into cinemas. Usually, everything happened the other way around: the film was released on television after it was shown on cinema screens.

In 1977, the project received the highest recognition – the creators were awarded the USSR State Prize.

What do you have?

“Irony…” over the past decades has been dismantled not only into quotations, but into atoms. Everyone has long known where certain episodes were filmed, where the phrase about the nasty “jellied fish” came from, whose photograph actually fell from the window of Nadya’s apartment…

But there is one more nuance that not everyone pays attention to – the heroes’ passports.

So, Nadya discovers Zhenya in her apartment, and after a skirmish, Lukashin, who has not yet sobered up, decides to prove that he is right by presenting his registration.

The passport he hands over to Nadya raises some doubts – the cover is red, but underneath there is a color scheme that may seem green. But when Nadya Sheveleva herself triumphantly presents the document to the uninvited guest, there is no doubt left – her passport is green!

Mayakovsky praised the passport when citizens of the USSR did not yet have one

In the legendary “Poems about the Soviet Passport” Vladimir Mayakovsky sang the praises of the “red-skinned passport girl.” The USSR passport was red, with which citizens said goodbye to the big country; modern Russian passports are also red.

So what did Nadya present then? May be, Barbara Brylska, Having forgotten, she placed a Polish passport in the picture?

No, everything is simpler. The shot included a document that was absolutely official at the time the film was filmed and released.

Mayakovsky wrote “Poems about the Soviet Passport” in 1929, referring to the international passport. Internal passports in the USSR began to be issued only in 1932, and they were gray in color.

1953 version

On October 21, 1953, the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On Passports” was issued, according to which a new type of document was introduced – it was slightly smaller than its predecessor and had a dark green cover with a diagonal textured grid. It was these green passports that were in force in the USSR at the time when Eldar Ryazanov worked on a painting.

On August 28, 1974, a decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR “On approval of the regulations on the passport system in the USSR” was issued, which introduced a new document form with a dark red cover.

The resolution stated: “The issuance of new type passports will be carried out from January 1, 1976 to December 31, 1981.” Thus, the official campaign to replace passports started exactly on the day of the television premiere of “The Irony of Fate.”

Therefore, those who watched the premiere of the film in 1976 did not see anything surprising in the documents of the heroes. Now it looks like a sign of that era.