The investigation is conducted by the Signs. Cucumber stock

First Series

At customs, the painting “A stock with a cucumber” was detained, which a certain foreigner was going to take abroad. The examination revealed that under the banal village plot hides an authentic sketch of the portrait of Cardinal Fernando Nino de Guevara by El Greco . A foreign tourist said that he had bought Podpaska at a thrift store (which is confirmed by a certificate) and did not know anything about the hidden contents of the picture, so there is no reason to attract him for smuggling. The case was transferred to the police, and now ZnATOKi must investigate the crime.

According to the workers of the provincial museum, where the painting of El Greco was stored, the portrait did not disappear and is in its place. An examination establishes that this picture is a copy of a recent performance. Also, copies replaced four more old valuable paintings. It turns out that a few months ago, criminals, turning off the alarm, carried out the most valuable paintings, which were found immediately, "in hot pursuit" - they were hidden in a boiler room nearby. The authenticity of the paintings found was not established, the director of the museum hushed up this story so as not to damage his reputation. Among the replaced paintings was a portrait of the cardinal, later detained at customs.

The investigation checks the involvement in the theft of museum director Pchelkin and collector Kipchak, who handed over to the Podpaska thrift store. But the collector clearly has nothing to do with it - the picture seized at customs visually differs from the original handed over to the store: it is clear that the foreigner bought the first suitable picture that came across to get a certificate for the export of the canvas from the country. Pchelkin is also not involved in the theft, although he deserves punishment for negligence. However, it turns out that copies of the stolen paintings were painted by student artists during a practice commissioned by some kind of dummy trust.

Second Series

The investigation goes to the Boborykin family. The Boborykins live as if in a museum: the walls of their apartment are covered with a raspberry damask and hung with paintings; there are a lot of antiques in the apartment: decorative vases, figurines, a luxurious floor lamp, etc. Elder Boborykin is a respected collector of paintings and antiques, his daughter Musa is a well-known and respected expert art historian, Albert, Musa’s husband, an astronomer by profession, also collects art objects. At the same time, the family trades in the sale of fake paintings, porcelain , art and Faberge jewelry. The organizer of the theft of paintings from the museum is Albert. The copying was supervised by the teacher of the art school Tsvetkov, who subsequently modified and artificially “aged” them, and his previously tried friend, the fireman from the boiler room where the paintings were found, ensured the theft itself.

The investigation is accelerated by the unexpected confession of Kim Faleev, a young, talented artist who produced fake Faberge products for the Boborykins. Boborykin Sr. marked them with a real stigma, which at one time he stole from the heirs of one of the Faberge masters. Faleev so accurately learned the manner of work of the great artist that his authorship was revealed only in the spectral analysis of alloys conducted by Zinaida Yanovna Kibrit. The muse, whom Kim "believed more than himself," more than once acknowledged the originals of his works that were marked with the stigma of Faberge. But when he showed her his work without a stigma, clearly hoping that she would recognize his hand, Muse did not understand anything and only indulgently praised Kim, and then he decided that it was better to give up and be punished, but to achieve recognition of his talent and get the opportunity to work under your own name.

The dramatic story of the appearance of the Boborykin collection emerges: a respected collector in the besieged Leningrad collected the most valuable part of his collection, exchanging art objects for a loaf of bread, and sometimes just taking or stealing them from dying people. Returning from Leningrad, Tomin reveals to Alberta the true face of his father-in-law. Tomin’s calculation is accurate: Albert, who remembered his hungry siege of childhood, decides to give the investigation fraud with fake Faberge products in which Boborykin Sr. participated. And if the statute of limitations has expired for siege cases, then Anatoly Kuzmich will no longer be able to evade responsibility for fraud with Faberge.

The film clearly demonstrates disapproval of the environment of collectors-fraudsters, which is closely connected with the layer of the so-called "business people" ("Madame Building Materials", market traders, speculator - "got" Dodik). She is shown as a source of dubious transactions and even criminal offenses. In contrast, positive characters were introduced into the film - honest and respectable collectors, who, according to Musa during interrogation with Znamensky, “are sometimes just saved” in the search for and restoration of artistic values, and whom Kowalski describes in the conversation with Shurik as “burning people” .

In this film, Znamensky “leaves the game” at the very beginning of the investigation, refusing to conduct business for personal reasons (having been familiar with Pchelkin for a long time, he is very negative about him and believes that this hostility can interfere with the objectivity of the investigation). The case is being investigated by another investigator, the young lieutenant Zykov ( Boris Shcherbakov ), who demonstrates a different work style: aggressive pressure, traps, unpleasant questions. Nevertheless, it works quite efficiently. Zykov later appears back in Case 23 and Case 24. One of the colorful old heroes also appears, Sergey Rudolfovich Kovalsky ( Grigory Lampe ), a former swindler nicknamed “Surgeon” (first shown in the second film (“Your True Name”), and then in the eighth ("Escape")), now firmly "stuck" and working as a seller in an art salon.

• The real story of the case of convict Mikhail Monastyrsky influenced the creation of the line with fake Faberge ^[1] .
• In the conversation between the two characters Strelkova and Alekseenko at the beginning of the 2nd series, real Kharkov collector Aleksey Nikolaevich Podkopai is mentioned, who in 1978 really donated over five hundred paintings and drawings to the Kharkov Art Museum.
• A poem that Albert reads to his students - “ Baby Toes ” (1922), author Karl Sandberg (1878-1967), in the Russian translation of “Children's Song (There is a white star, Janetta)” (free lane by Mikhail Zenkevich , published in Valentina Zhuravleva’s book The Man Who Made Atlantis, 1963).
• The half-length sketch for "Portrait of Cardinal Nino de Guevara", which appears in the film, is actually located in a small museum in Zurich , and the full- length portrait , which he serves as a sketch for, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA.
• In the book of Olga and Alexander Lavrov, instead of the portrait of the cardinal in the film, El Greco stole and disguised another image of Diego Velazquez 's Infanta with an Apple. There is actually no such picture among Velazquez’s works, the apple motif is used only on the canvas “ Portrait of Infanta Baltasar Carlos with a Dwarf ”, but the apple is not held by a prince, but by a dwarf jester.

Major roles

• Georgy Martynyuk - Znamensky
• Leonid Kanevsky - Tomin
• Elsa of the Swans - Cybrit

Cast

• Boris Tenin - collector Anatoly Kuzmich Boborykin
• Lilia Tolmacheva - art critic Muza Anatolyevna, daughter of Boborykin
• Nikita Podgorny - Albert Ivanovich, husband of Muse
• Nikolai Karachentsov (in the credits - Karachents e c) - jeweler Kim Faleev
• Boris Scherbakov - investigator Zykov
• Lyudmila Khityaeva - “Madame Building Materials” (Rudneva)
• Semyon Sokolovsky - Colonel Skopin
• Grigory Lampe - former fraudster Kowalski
• Vladimir Anisko - artist Tsvetkov
• Vladimir Vasiliev - Director of the Pchelkin Museum
• Alexey Zharkov - "Stoker", the criminal
• Ivan Ufimtsev - collector Kipchak
• Peter Krylov - expert Obnorsky
• Olga Chuvaeva - Tamara
• Yuri Komarov - Dodik
• Pavel Mahotin - collector from Kharkov Strelkov
• Yuri Volkov - a famous mathematician and collector
• Nikolay Brilling - collector Rozanov
• Vladimir Andreev - expert appraiser in a thrift store
• Kleon Protasov - KGB officer (in the movie prologue)
• Ivetta Kiseleva - housekeeper Elena Anatolyevna
• Vadim Ledogorov (not in the credits) - student of art school Sasha

• Sergeev E. The vertical and horizontal search // Newspaper "Soviet Culture", October 26, 1979:

“Sometimes it seems that the characters whose names are in the title of the cycle, already begin to interfere with the series. Because negative characters are much more voluminous, convex, livelier, they experience complex psychological dramas. But in the characters and fates of Pal Palych, Shurik and Zinochka for eight years, no changes have occurred ” ^[2] .

• Alexander Sedov (essay), September 2016:

“Ordinary viewers spoke more frankly. Less than a month later, in November 1979, Literaturnaya Gazeta quoted a letter from a shipbuilding engineer from Leningrad with the Hamlet name Rosencrantz: “A stock with a cucumber” differs from previous episodes of “Investigators Lead by Investigators” in that connoisseurs do not conduct investigations. Znamensky was the first to fail. Under the pretext that one of the alleged criminals - the director of the museum - was once familiar with the inspector and he has antipathy for the director, Znamensky disappears from the screen. It is unlikely that, say, Sherlock Holmes would have ceded his business to an ordinary detective: it was not for this that the image of an astute detective was conceived! ... Cybrit plays a very minor role in action. There remains only Tomin, who, as a professional criminal investigator, is not always on top here. ... All this does not remain without consequences. In the film “A stock with a cucumber” there is little action, dynamics, but there are many episodes that are clearly protracted. And the well-deserved glory of the cycle “Investigators are leading” should be protected ”" ^[3] .

• From the book of F.I. Razzakov (2009):

“After the demonstration of some episodes, the country's leadership promptly responded to them. For example, after the film “A stock with a cucumber”, a resolution of the Council of Ministers on changing the procedure for the export of cultural property abroad was published ” ^[4] .