Yuri Detochkin

The plot of the film “Watch Out for the Car” has a fictional story about how an employee of an insurance office stole personal cars from people living on unearned income, sold them, and transferred the proceeds to the accounts of orphanages.

Initially, it was planned to shoot a dashing, simple western -style comedy - car chases, unthinkable comedy tricks, swiftness and dynamics. And the protagonist is the modern Robin Hood, a noble robber who effortlessly, easily and triumphantly accomplishes his exploits “for the glory of universal virtue and supreme justice”. But in the future, for the creators of this image - screenwriters Eldar Ryazanov and Emil Braginsky - the two-color western genre seemed not so interesting, not quite suitable for showing a wide social picture of society, for creating bright, interesting characters.

I wanted to weigh more precisely the traditionally universal categories of good, evil, nobility, meanness, justice. Therefore, we preferred paradoxical, meandering passages inward to direct movement along a plane.

And they made the protagonist, though essentially honest, but a rogue in form ^[1] .

The greatest difficulty for the authors was the creation of the image of the protagonist, whose realism would not cause the viewer any doubt. Although the social nature of the character was very clear: Detochkin is a modern Robin Hood, the authors did not want to simplify it to the level of a simple noble robber. And, based on the traditions of literature and cinema, they made an attempt to create a character that combines the features of three classic heroes: Don Quixote , Charlie Chaplin, and Prince Myshkin .

We wanted to make a kind, sad comedy about a good person who seems abnormal, but in reality he is more normal than many others. After all, he draws attention to what we often pass by indifferently. This man is a big, upright child. His eyes are wide open to the world, his reactions are immediate, his words are simple-minded, restraining centers do not interfere with his sincere impulses. We gave him the name Detochkin ^[1] .

To this surname, the authors gave the character an ordinary appearance and profession, necessary to disorient the viewer at the beginning of the film regarding the true intentions of Detochkin - an outstanding person is engaged in property insurance during the day, which (perhaps already that night) will be stolen.

Detochkin’s marital status, initially presented as a standard option - “wife-children”, as the script was written, the authors had to change a lot: idealists of this kind, first of all, want to arrange social life, and only then their own. Therefore, except for a retired mother and beloved woman, who unanimously reproach him for an inappropriate lifestyle, the hero has no one.

In addition to all this, in order to “enrich” the portrait of Detochkin, he is supplied with a certificate, which is mentally normal, although he had a severe concussion after a car accident (Detochkin is a former driver).

He is, if you will, the ideal hero who has been lowered from heaven to prosaic earth in order to discover our deviations from social and human norms. This human phenomenon intrigued us not by itself, although it was he who was the object of our artistic research. Detochkin is a kind of scale of human honesty ...

Despite such characteristics of the authors, the higher leadership, first represented by the editors of the film committee and then Minister of Culture A.V. Romanov , found the script to be bad, and the main character was unclear by whom (is he a positive hero or a negative?), Setting an example for “bad instincts ” ^[1] .

It was not easy to relate to Detochkin and the leading actor himself - Smoktunovsky, who previously embodied the images of Prince Myshkin on the stage of the Leningrad BDT , nuclear physicist Kulikov in the drama " Nine Days of One Year " and Shakespeare's Hamlet in the film of the same name. At first, the actor could not understand at all “how this crank should be embodied so that the cinematic presentation of the plot does not have the character of a joke” ^[2] .

The film critic V.P. Dyomin called Detochkin a madman. Compassion and compassion for the character, he defined the hero himself as a person of high thoughts and noble impulses, and his actions as absurdity and phantasmagoria.

We entrust justice in our world with the police, the task of providing orphans - the budget commission of the Supreme Council. He, who does not know the alienation of thoughts of actions, receives for this the most weighty slap in the face from living life. It can serve as an example of its childish purity, infantile clarity in spreading the honest from the dishonest, the very image of high thoughts and noble impulses is just not an act. This hero is for sympathy, love, a cordial smile, but not an example, not a sample ^[3] .

And in the four-volume History of Soviet Cinema ( 1978 ), Detochkin is presented to readers as an honest, moral, moral, but naive grotesque-eccentric hero who opposes self-interest and injustice.

The hero of this comedy is an eccentric, a small insurance agent who has chosen the path of personal struggle against property inequality and money-grubbing ^[4] .

In 2012, a monument to Yuri Detochkin was installed in Samara . In 2002, the Theft Museum named after Yuri Detochkin was opened in Moscow ^[5] .

• “Watch out for the car” in the “Mosfilm Golden Collection” (Neopr.) Date of appeal September 14, 2013.
• Ryazanov E.A. Unsumpted results . - M .: Vagrius, 1995 .-- 510 p. - ISBN 5-7027-0126-7 .
• Innocent Smoktunovsky. Life and roles / Compiled by V. Ya. Dubrovsky. - Moscow: AST-press book, 2002. - 400 p. - ISBN 5-7805-1017-2 .
• Ryazanov E. A. My friends are artists // Neva: magazine. - L. , 1982. - No. 7 . - S. 170 .
• Smoktunovsky I. M. Time of good hopes. - M. , 1979.
• Demin V.P. First person: artist and screen arts (neopr.) (Inaccessible link) . Date of treatment September 14, 2013. Archived September 23, 2013.
• Abul-Kasimov, Khanjar. The history of Soviet cinema. 1917-1967: 1952-1967 (neopr.) . Date of appeal September 14, 2013. (unavailable link)