Hello I'm your aunt!

The action was moved to the beginning of the XX century .

Unemployed Babs Baberley ( Alexander Kalyagin ), fleeing the police, ends up in a rich house. Here he is already waiting for two young gentlemen, Jackie and Charlie, however, they do not need Babs, but Aunt Charlie, millionaire donna Rosa d'Alvadorets, the widow of Don Pedro from Brazil, where “there are many, many wild monkeys,” whom the main character becomes hoping to hide from the police. Such a mess was started, so that Donna Rosa, having her authority and fortune, was able to convince the guardian of two pretty girls, in whom gentlemen were in love, to whom Babs fell, to allow marriage up to 25 years, while retaining the right to receive a dowry.

Meanwhile, the rich "aunt" attracts the attention of the lame Colonel Chesney ( Mikhail Kozakov ) and the aforementioned guardian - Judge Kriegs ( Armen Dzhigarkhanyan ), who are eager to improve their financial situation. And all would be nothing ... but here comes the real Donna Rosa, accompanied by a young girl with whom Babs is hopelessly in love.

Donna Rosa is in no hurry to expose the impostor, and Babs manages to get permission from Judge Kriegs to marry the wards before returning to the old life of a homeless tramp.

• Alexander Kalyagin - Babs Baberley
• Oleg Shklovsky - Jackie Chesney, son of Colonel Chesney, Betty's fiancé
• Mikhail Kozakov - Francis Chesney, Jackie's father, Colonel
• Mikhail Lyubesnov - Charlie Wakeham, Donna Rosa's nephew, Annie's fiance, Jackie's friend
• Tatyana Vasilyeva - Annie, Charlie's bride, Betty's girlfriend
• Galina Orlova - Betty, Jackie's bride, Annie's girlfriend (voiced by Natalia Gurzo )
• Valentine Gaft - Brasset, Jackie Chesney's footman
• Armen Dzhigarkhanyan - Kriegs, guardian Annie and Betty, judge
• Tamara Nosova - Donna Rosa d'Alvadorets, Aunt Charlie, widow of Don Pedro, Brazilian millionaire (voiced by Victoria Chaeva )
• Tatyana Vedeneeva - Ella Delay, a pupil of Donna Rosa

• Script writer: Victor Titov
• Stage Director: Victor Titov
• Director of Photography: George Rerberg
• Set Designer: Victor Petrov

• Composer: Vladislav Kazenin

In 1975, the Velvet Revolution took place in Russian cinema. For the first time in a chaste, almost Puritan Soviet cinema, a male actor played a woman, and even the main role. Actor Alexander Kalyagin charmed, surprised, conquered and made laugh a huge country, pretending to be Don Roza d'Alvadorets in the comedy “Hello, I am your aunt!”

- The documentary “Hello, I am your aunt. A random masterpiece ”(director Alla Herz, 2007) ^[2]

“Hello, I’m your aunt” - since 1975 it’s not only a proverb , but also the name of the film - “Hello, I’m your aunt!” - the favorite eccentric comedy of the decade .

Television play Englishman Brandon Thomas filmed modestly, almost entirely in one pavilion . In this comedy with changing clothes, the main thing is not the scene, and not even the plot, but the person.

Alexander Kalyagin selflessly plays a man playing a woman - aunt Charlie. Armen Dzhigarkhanyan and Mikhail Kozakov - in the roles of unsuccessful fans.

Starting from this film, our beloved South American country is Brazil , where there are so many Don Pedro and wild monkeys.

- Leonid Parfyonov in the program “ The Days of 1961-2003: Our Era ” (Year 1975)

My aunt Charley was born from the memories of the mothers who raised me, my aunts. It included the features of girls and women with whom I was in love, whom I just caught a glimpse of on the street or in transport. We never discussed with director Viktor Titov : what type of woman should I play? God forbid. Never been in my thoughts. Memory betrayed "on-the-hill" either a pose, now a gesture, or a manner of holding a fan, shooting eyes, flirting, raising a leg, clapping eyelashes ... we only discarded what was not necessary.

- Alexander Kalyagin from the book "Alexander Kalyagin" ^[3]

Speaking in the Chekhov language, when they say: “Kalyagin is dead!”, He will immediately go: ah, this is the very aunt Charlie! And they will not remember either Aesop , or Platonov , or Chichikov , or Lenin.

- Alexander Kalyagin in an interview with the newspaper Novye Izvestia ^[4]

There is information that at the dinner party of the candidate for membership of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Petr Nilovich Demichev, they talked about the trophy film " Aunt Charlie ", and the wife of one Foreign Ministry employee complained that the youth were not familiar with such a fun story ^[2] .

Some time later, the director Viktor Titov , who was unemployed after the film “ Every Day of Doctor Kalinnikova ” and the pending application for the film based on the novel by Maxim Gorky “The Life of Klim Samgin ” ^[2], received a proposal to make a comedy.

The picture had several working titles, one of which was “Who is Who”, while there was no single solution. Mikhail Kozakov shared the painful choice of the name in a conversation with the poet Naum Olev . According to Kozakov, Olev immediately issued the option “Hello, I am your aunt!”, Which he transferred to Titov. The name was liked and it was immediately adopted ^[2] . After deciding on the name, the director faced the question of the style of the film. He opted for silent cinema , which will allow the actors to improvise, thus avoiding possible production cliches. The cast of the film - people with a great sense of humor - caught the parody-grotesque manner of playing and literally bathed in what was happening ^[2] . Some deliberately looking elements of costumes and make-up, such as tassels painted by Nosova , excessively large painted freckles by Vasilyeva , Dzhigarkhanyan’s mustache glued upside down, or Kalyagin’s dress trimmed with fringe from ordinary curtains ^{[1] [2]} .

The budget of the television movie was limited, so the costumes were in one copy, the shooting was carried out on two cameras, the film was not enough, and many scenes of the film were shot at night due to the stellar cast of actors working in the repertoire of the theaters in which they worked, and to collect them at the same time during the day it was almost impossible ^[2] . The film was shot in one cramped pavilion, and a sense of space was created due to camera skill and inventiveness of the director George Rerberg ^[2] .

Full-scale shooting was carried out in the estate " Kuskovo " in the east of Moscow, in particular, near the Dutch house at the pond, which in the film is presented as the mansion of Colonel Chesney ^[5]

Evgeny Leonov , Oleg Tabakov and Vladimir Etush tried on the role of the self-proclaimed millionaire Donna Rosa d'Alvadorets. However, the director preferred the masters of the then little-known Alexander Kalyagin. Zinovy ​​Gerdt claimed the role of Colonel Francis Chesney, played by Mikhail Kozakov . A hindrance was the tour in Spain and Portugal by the Puppet Theater. S. Obraztsov , in which he worked ^[1] .

According to the director's plan, the Brazilian millionaire Donna Rosa was supposed to star with a real monkey. A chimpanzee named Yasha was brought to Ostankino , who attacked the second director Yuri Prokhorov and bit his hand. Yuri was hospitalized and underwent three operations to save his hands from infection. Instead, Yasha took a tiny hand-made monkey from the corner of Durov . However, Tamara Nosova refused to play with her, instead Tatyana Vedeneyeva starred with the monkey ^[1] . The animal was very nervous, and every time a car engine was started in the frame, the monkey peed right on Vedeneeva’s dress ^[2] .

The famous phrase “I’m Aunt Charlie from Brazil, where there are a lot of wild monkeys in the forests” - a replica changed by Victor Titov from the Russian translation of the play: “... from Brazil, where the monkeys live.” In the original, the aunt’s classic phrase about Brazil sounded like “... the country where the nuts come from” and meant a very specific kind of “ Brazil nut, ” as well as a pun, - this can be translated from English as “country, where the morons come from ” ^[6] .

Robert Burns

• The song “Love and Poverty” performed by Alexander Kalyagin in the film is a poem by Robert Burns “Poortith Cauld and Restless Love” translated by Samuel Marshak ^[7] to the music of Vladislav Kazenin
• In the scene where Babs Baberley first meets at the cinema and then presents flowers to Ella Delay, the instrumental version of the song “ Auld Lang Syne ”, also written by Robert Burns, sounds. ^[8]

Music Themes

• Colonel Francis Chesney - “ March of Colonel Gods ”.
• Chase - Ragtime " Black and White Rag " arranged by Charlie Chaplin .
• Trailer from Evening in the Music Hall with Charlie Chaplin - Atwell Ragtime 12th Street Rag.
• One of the prologue scenes (eating sausages) is the Ettwell Ragtime “Syncopated Sadie”.
• Brasset does exercises with wine and a cigar - Atwell's ragtime “ The Poor People of Paris, ” plays the melody of the song “La Goualante du Pauvre Jean” on the gramophone, which is somewhat anachronistic about the events in the film - the song was written by in 1954.
• The Appearance of Ella Deley - Theme from the movie Waterloo Bridge .
• The film also made extensive use of instrumental pieces performed by an orchestra conducted by Gunter Oppenheimer (GDR) from the 1971 Der lustige Klimperkasten album.

Used motion pictures

• At the beginning of the film, a kind of screen saver presents a “historical chronicle”, interspersed with screensavers with Alexander Kalyagin. This chronicle in many fragments repeats the historical chronicle from Mikhail Romm ’s documentary film “ Ordinary Fascism ” (specifically: Marlene Dietrich fashion show, Venus proportions contest, women's boxing, a balancer on a cable and the opening shots of a costume parade).
• Excerpts from the following films are used in the movie theater scene at the beginning of the film:
  • Sherlock Jr with Buster Keaton
  • “ Safety is the least!” »With Harold Lloyd
  • “ Evening at the Music Hall ” with Charlie Chaplin

Movie Impact

• In 2011 , the Ukrainian director Alexander Karpenchuk shot a kind of remake of the film - the film "March Eighth"

• Drag queen

• “Hello, I'm your aunt!” On the site “Encyclopedia of Russian Cinema”
• "Hello, I am your aunt!" On Ruskino.ru
• " Hello, I’m Your Aunt! ” On the Internet Movie Database
• Hello I'm your aunt! on Nashfilm.ru