Review of Ivan Vasilievich Changes His Profession (1973)
Seen in 2025.
By coincidence, building superintendent Ivan “Bunsha” Vasilievich goes through a resident’s time machine to the court of Ivan the Terrible. They look exactly the same.
A farce with less plot than The Diamond Arm (1969) and more physical comedy in the style of Benny Hill. The opening is strong, with good production design and a harmoniously zany attitude at every level, but the characters are not developed enough to support the more static situations in the middle and ending, and no literary points are drawn out of travelling through time. As a Swede, I certify that the delegation to the court of Ivan IV is impeccably accurate.