The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming, 1966.
Directed by Norman Jewison.
Starring Carl Reiner, Eva Marie Saint, Alan Arkin, Brian Keith, Jonathan Winters, Theodore Bikel, Tessie O’Shea, Ben Blue, John Philip Law, Andrea Dromm, and Paul Ford.
SYNOPSIS:
Norman Jewison’s 1966 hit The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming arrives on Blu-ray again from Kino Lorber, complete with a 23-minute interview with the director and a new commentary track. Nominated for four Oscars, the film doesn’t often get talked about much anymore, but it’s worth revisiting.
If I had to make a list of the best movies of the 1960s, I doubt I’d include Norman Jewison’s 1966 film The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming, nor would probably a lot of people.
However, I think filmgoers of a certain age might, particularly those who are around the same age as film historian and producer Michael Schlesinger and writer Mark Evanier, who proclaim it such at the start of their commentary track Kino Lorber included on this new Blu-ray. I’ll get back to that in a minute.
I wasn’t familiar with The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming before watching it for this review. I enjoyed it and thought it was well-made, hence my giving it four out of five stars, but it didn’t quite grab me the way it grabbed Schlesinger and Evanier when they first saw it in 1966.
The story stars Carl Reiner as Walt Whittaker, a frustrated playwright who has spent the summer on fictional Gloucester Island off the coast of Massachusetts with his wife (Eva Marie Saint) and two young children. A Russian submarine runs aground near the rental home they’ve been staying in, and a group of sailors from the ship make contact with him, hoping they can get help with the problem.
Alan Arkin, who was making his debut in a major film role, is Yuri Rozanov, the leader of the ragtag group. He has a couple of his men hold the family at gunpoint while he and the others venture into town.
The townspeople are comprised of an ensemble cast including Brian Keith as Police Chief Link Mattocks and Jonathan Winters as his hapless second-in-command. Word gets around that Russians are roaming the streets, which causes people to assume they are part of an invasion force, although Mattocks has his doubts.
The situations with the Whittakers and in the town escalate, with a mix of comedic and dramatic results. (The story alternates between comedy, including one very funny physical comedy scene, and tense drama, but Jewison handles it with skill. I never felt like I was watching two moves mashed together.)
The climax has a moment that seems very on-the-nose today, but I suppose at the time, just a few years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, it struck filmgoers as an overt statement of the main theme, which is, unsurprisingly, “Can’t we all just find common ground?”
The presentation of the film on this new Blu-ray disc from Kino Lorber doesn’t seem to have been restored; there are obvious scratches and other things here and there, especially in the blue sky. However, it’s very watchable, and I assume there wasn’t much of a budget to do a restoration.
The Schlesinger/Evanier commentary is new, having been recorded last year. (They mention that they’re doing it not long after Arkin’s death in June 2023.) You’ve likely seen Schlesinger’s name, since he has done many film commentaries. Evanier has been a writer of movies, TV shows, comic books, and more for several decades, and he has an interesting blog if you’re into the histories of those media.
Carried over from previous home video editions of the movie is a 23-minute interview with Jewison, who gives a pretty thorough discussion of the making of the film and its post-release reception. Between it and the new commentary, fans of The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming should get a pretty comprehensive examination of it. The theatrical trailer rounds out the platter.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★★★★ / Movie: ★★★★
Brad Cook
