“Georgian sells soda”: jokes of the newsreel “Wick” that are not outdated

The first issue of The Wick was released on July 4, 1962. The era of television, in fact, was just beginning, so in the sixties, cinemas were the main distribution channel for this magazine: they showed it there before film shows. The current older generation remembers this magazine in a kind way: the boring News of the Day or children’s cartoons were an alternative.

And in “Wick” it was not only fun, but also very relevant. Of course, the permanent artistic director Sergei Mikhalkov was not in vain the de facto main Soviet “PR man” since Stalin’s time. Political, as they said then, maturity, ideological flair – ideal, insider information – by itself.

So nothing superfluous, no anti-Soviet. But – in strict accordance with the rule, again set by Stalin (“We need Gogols and Shchedrins”) – merciless scourging of “individual shortcomings”. With trademark Mikhalkov’s humor: whoever read at least his fables is in the know.

It’s funny that the authors of “Wicks” in different years (including the 60s) were all those who later formed our satirical industry, so powerful in perestroika and immediately after it. Mikhail Zhvanetsky, Semyon Altov and many, many, many other well-known satirists. And their “voices” still sound in the Mikhalkovian manner – a miracle is the same as with Arkady Raikin, who turned any text into his own, Raikin’s.

Eternal stories

In total, 393 film releases of “Wick” were released on the screens (the last one was in 1995), on average, this is 12 releases annually. Some of them, especially the early ones, we, the current ones, will have to comment on for a long time – the realities of Soviet life turned inside out in many respects have changed. And some are “as they were taken today”. Here are examples, and for reasons of length we will limit ourselves to the sixties.

“The Living Corpse” (very first issue, 1962). The husband (Sergey Filippov), who has decided to leave the family and does not want to pay alimony or participate in the lives of the children in any way, lies down in the coffin, takes a “selfie” – and a photograph of the deceased man, as it were, comes to his wife (Lyudmila Sokolova). Based on real events, the names of the hard-core alimony are listed at the end of the story.

“Covered” (issue 3, 1962). An employee of the Automobili store (Georgy Millyar – by the way, hurry to see him not in the image of Baba Yaga!) Is ready to sell any car to customers, except for a car covered with a cover. Why? No, it’s reserved. Or maybe it’s still possible (and the bill slips imperceptibly into the seller’s pocket)? Well, to hell with you, let’s cover another one instead. And so, of course, with every car on the site.

The Cherry Orchard (Issue 4, 1962). A documentary episode about the destruction of gardens in Moscow.

“Wet Place” (Issue 5, 1962). Proto-feminist story. The young man is scared and cannot protect his girlfriend from hooligans on the street. A passing grandmother hits the hooligan with an umbrella, leaving a puddle of it. A girl does the same… to a young man.

“Victim (almost according to Chekhov)” (issue 7, 1963). A woman talks about her tragic fate. She has a lover, but she cannot be with him – she married an old academician. After the death of her husband, it is also impossible to connect with her beloved, because another rich, elderly academician appears in the life of a lady …

“Transformers of Nature” (Issue 10, 1963). Ecology. After the rest of an ordinary family of motorists, scraps, garbage, and broken trees remain in the forest. Those who every warm season travel and go to the forest and beaches with sharp sticks and garbage bags, collecting “pigs”, will confirm that it is not outdated at all!

“Mine” (Issue 14, 1963). Having received a new apartment, the tenants from the old one remove everything, right down to the wires and door handles. However, they do not get a new apartment: the warrant turns out to be received without reason …

“Appendicitis” (Issue 15, 1963). A cartoon story about a bureaucrat with two phones: requests “from below” must be coordinated with the “top”, this is the duty of an official. In the end, the phones are connected by tubes, there is no need for a bureaucrat.

“Thunder and Lightning” (Issue 17, 1963). The same gag that in the same year appeared in the film “I’m walking around Moscow”: sewers are being laid on the street, asphalt is being laid. Then they lay the gas, having previously broken the asphalt, – then they lay it again. Then the same with electricity and plumbing. It’s just right to put a zipper on the pavement, the author’s voice suggests. The jokes about “seasonal borders” are still half a century away, but the reality is still the same.

“Two porches – two ends” (issue 32, 1965) is another story about housing and communal services. Two trusts – “Glavremont” and “Glavsnos” – took over the same house. So that no one is offended, the house is first repaired, and then immediately demolished, the plans of both departments have been fulfilled.

Or here is an arch-modern plot, however, rather for Europe. “We’re freezing!” (1966): All the tenants go to the building manager complaining that they are freezing. The house manager offers to raise hands to those who are freezing. And he does this several times until the tenants warm up.

There are even gender issues in Wick. Let’s say, patriarchy: the plot “Give way to a woman” (issue 48, 1966) revolves around the fact that in Tbilisi men do traditionally female work: they sell haberdashery, sell soda. Give women jobs, Moscow authors say. Why do women even have jobs? – as if Tbilisians ask …

Turn to Rigidity

“Welcome!” (Issue 21, 1964). In the last thaw year, steel, familiar from fables like “They eat Russian bacon,” comes through in Mikhalkov’s voice. This story, based on real events, is about foreign tourists who spread anti-Soviet stuff and just bring smuggling for fartsovka. Shortly after the story (the editors spoke? Measures taken!) Foreign amateur tourism in the USSR was strongly screwed in favor of the collective bus tourism.

“Around the Road” (issue 42, 1965) – thanks to “Wick” we have the rarest documentary footage of the famous Stalinist Transpolar Highway, which was abandoned immediately after the spring of 1953. Early Brezhnev times – we see a revision of the Stalinist legacy: something, maybe, will come in handy? ..

Sometimes in a satirical magazine, conflicts that are carefully shaded in the official Soviet picture of the world also appear. For example, national. In the plot “Two points of view” (issue 46, 1966) – a story about newly discovered sources of mineral water near Sukhumi. Which the Institute of Balneology of Georgia (does everyone remember that Abkhazia was then part of the Georgian SSR?), what a surprise, does not want to supplement with a new clinic. What mismanagement, an ordinary Soviet viewer of that time will say. It is clear why, we say now …

Remnants of the old – how tenacious they are still! “What are you singing, devils?” (1966) – young passengers of the train drove the old woman crazy with their loud singing. “Non-Artistic Amateur” (1966) – decoration of balconies in new buildings in the style of “who is in what much.”

The genre is light, the themes are dramatic both then and to this day. “Golden Hands” (1967) is a painfully familiar situation when it is easier to buy equipment or machinery abroad than to give money to domestic craftsmen (who said import substitution?). “You can’t think of it on purpose” – about such a low quality of housing that it has to be blown up immediately after construction.

Or take The Nightmare, an animated cartoon that portrays our current security system in supermarkets as an unrealistic nightmare. Security guards, inspections… Then it was considered a dystopia, today it is a reality. And “Empty” (one of Zhvanetsky’s first works, 1969) is a realistic canvas: experienced workers are in no hurry to follow the orders of their superiors and roll empty cars, because they know that in a couple of minutes the order will be canceled.

What to look at

Visually, the old “Wicks” are a real find for those who are interested in the details of the daily life of the Land of the Soviets. Here, for example, is a restaurant of the 1962 model from the Carousel plot. It is very similar to the restaurant “Dandelion” from Eldar Ryazanov’s film “Give a Book of Complaints” shot a year later, only in color. You can see bottles of mineral water, barbecue and wine, visitors in evening dresses (a restaurant is a way out!).

The picture is reminiscent of the illustrations for The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food. And Georgy Vitsin, dressed in a suit, in his place, and a waiter of southern appearance (Leonid Kanevsky) …

And here is the plot of Pirozhki, thanks to which the encyclopedia of a winter Moscow street has been preserved. A cart with the actual pies, all styles of fur hats, commemorative rubles, brand new panel houses showing through a blizzard… The visual code of this story will then form the basis of the street episodes of The Irony of Fate.

The plot of the “Criticism Foundation”: here we see already a Soviet office of the sixties model – floor-to-ceiling windows and light modern furniture, but still black telephones and curtains with lambrequins a la the Column Hall of the House of the Unions. Bakelite perpetual writing instruments and flip calendars. It is interesting that the loosening of the tie becomes the symbol of the official (Georgy Yalovich), who was ordered to criticize the authorities. And when the order is canceled by the boss (Nikolai Parfyonov), the tie is instantly tightened back.

The plot “Operation Neman” (1966) is another opportunity to look at the investigator played by Oleg Yefremov (as in “Beware of the Car”) and the policeman in the person of Yevgeny Leonov (as in “The Street is Full of Surprises”). And to the police “GAZ-22” – as in “Experts are investigating.” It is interesting to look at the counter of a real shoe store and find out that the best shoes in the USSR were still Finnish – the same TopMan brand, which was also known in perestroika.

Jokes-demotivators

Many gags from the then “Wick” entered the jokes and proverbs. For example, the plot “Fatal Mistake”: tigers, having penetrated the Research Institute of the Village of the Research Institute of the City (hello Strugatsky), ate the researchers for a long time, but as soon as they ate the cleaner, they were caught and put in a cage. In the variant with cannibals, the plot is repeated in different forms so far!

Or here is “The Victim of Hospitality”: the story of “defrost” artists who are poured in every apartment, and therefore they cannot live until the evening sober, was repeated many times after that. And for us now it is already a historical document.

Such jokes are now called “memes”, and a few years ago such things, usually in pictures, were called demotivators. With regard to “Wick” – it turns out that this name is too accurate. Scourge of individual shortcomings, the project of Sergei Mikhalkov was so talented that he made these minor shortcomings stereotyped, which means that he demotivated people. After all, what kind of communism, what kind of utopia, if everything goes like this, without changing for years and decades?

From the thaw of the sixties, full of hope, the disappointed seventies were born, of which the angry eighties were born … Perhaps, instead of optimism and a desire to overcome those very shortcomings, “Wick” instilled in Soviet people a sense of hopelessness that they would ever overcome these endless shortcomings? Although, maybe this was a cunning plan? ..