Russian comedy to watch: Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession

If you are pondering what Russian movie you could watch, give a try to this one: “Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession”.

Filmed in 1973 by the movie director Leonid Gaidai, it was based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s play “Ivan Vasilyevich”.

The plot of the movie unfolds around an engineer-inventor Sasha (Shurik) Timofeev, who created a time machine and due to an accidental sequence of events swaped the Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible with Shurik’s neighbour Ivan Vasilyevich together with the recidivist thief George Miloslavsky.

The movie became a leader of the Soviet film distribution and until this days keeps its status as one of the classic Russian comedies. There is probably no Russian who haven’t watched it, and the ones who watched, loved it.

Today, thanks to the movie studio Mosfilm that released many of its old movies for public access, you can watch it for free with Russian or English subtitles:

– Version with English subtitles
– Version with Russian subtitles

Enjoy! 🙂