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Brilliantovaya ruka
Film poster
Directed by	Leonid Gaidai
Produced by	Mosfilm
Written by	Leonid Gaidai Yakov Kostyukovsky Moris Slobodskoy
Starring	Yuri Nikulin Nina Grebeshkova Andrei Mironov Anatoli Papanov Nonna Mordyukova
Music by	Aleksandr Zatsepin
Cinematography	Igor Chernykh
Editing by	Valentina Yankovskaya
Release date(s)	1968
Running time	100 min.
Language	Russian
IMDb profile

The Diamond Arm (Russian: "Бриллиантовая рука", "Brilliantovaya ruka") is a Russian comedy film filmed by Mosfilm and first released in 1968. It is sometimes credited as the best Russian comedy ever made.^{[citation needed]} The film was directed by slapstick director Leonid Gaidai and starred several famous Soviet actors, including Yuri Nikulin, Andrei Mironov, Anatoli Papanov, Nonna Mordyukova and Svetlana Svetlichnaya. Brilliantovaya ruka has become a Russian cult film. It was also one of the all-time leaders at the Soviet box office with over 76,700,000 theatre admissions in the Soviet era.

A Soviet-era boss of shadow economy (referred to as "The Chief" (Шеф)) wants to smuggle a batch of jewelry into Russia by hiding it into the orthopedic cast of a courier. By a confusing accident the contraband lands into the cast of a broken arm of a "simple Soviet citizen" Semyon Semyonovich Gorbunkov. He lets the militsiya know about this, and the militsiya captain uses Gorbunkov as a bait to catch the crooks. Most of the plot are various attempts of the crooks to lure Gorbunkov into a position when they could have quietly, without wet job, take the cast off him.

Many expressions from the movie have passed into everyday use.

• "As a friend of mine... deceased now... used to say - I knew too much..."
• "And if the tenants refuse (to buy lottery tickets), we'll shut off the gas supply!"
• "Only aristocrats and degenerates drink champagne in the morning..." (Шампанское по утрам пьют аристократы или дегенераты) (pauses, checks out the bottle and drinks right from it)
• (tears in his eyes) "They might even give me an award... post-humo-usly!" (sniffs)
• "You should come over and visit us in Kolyma (an infamous region in Russia's Far North where convicts are sent)." (Chokes on beer, coughing...) - "Thanks, but I'd rather you come here to see us."
• Many people seriously think that "Tsigel" (Cigel, Ziegel) means "time" in some foreign language. The (fictional) phrase "Цигель, цигель, ай-люлю!" expresses hurry and urgency, either for real or as a mockery. (Occasionally, Ziegel is "brick" in German and Yiddish.)
• "As our beloved Chief used to say..."
  • "Strike iron without walking away from the cash register" (Куй железо не отходя от кассы) (a portmanteau of a proverb "Strike while the iron is hot" and an instruction for customers by each Soviet cashier's desk: "Count your money before walking away from the cash register")
  • "Even teetotallers and those with cirrhosis will have a drink on someone else's tab!" In Russian it rhymes nicely: "За чужой счет пьют даже трезвенники... и язвенники!"
  • "I haven't yet seen a husband who wouldn't want to become a bachelor for just an hour..."
  • "If a person is an idiot, it'll last a long time" (Если человек идиот, то это надолго)
• A curse: "May you live... only off... of PAYCHECKS!" (Что б ты жил... на одну... ЗАРПЛАТУ!)
• A curse: "May I see you in a coffin, in white slippers!" (Шоб я видел тя у гробу! У белых тапках!)
• A mocking reproach: "Semyon Semyonych!..."
• A comment to an embarrassing situation when a demo fails: "With a casual hand gesture, the pants are turning into... the pants are turning INTO... into a pair of elegant shorts!"
• "Obliko morale" (a mockingly Italianized Russian term "moralny oblik" (моральный облик), "moral character", a part of the cliché "moral character of a Soviet person". In the film it was uttered by the character when he tried to circumnavigate a foreign prostitute: "Russo turisto! Obliko morale! Verstehen?".
• "Flowers for his woman, ice cream for the kids. And don't mix it up, Kutuzov!" (Дитям мороженое, бабе цветы.... и не перепутай, Кутузов!)
• "I'm not a coward... But I'm scared!" "Я не трус, но я боюсь!"

VHS cover

• "I've got an idea: what if I..." -- "You'd better not." -- "I see... Then, maybe I should..." -- "No, you shouldn't." -- "Okay... In that case, maybe at least you'd let me..." -- "Well, yeah, you might try that."
• "As they say, that is c'est la vie!" (c'est la vie is French for "that is life", in other words the phrase is: "that is that is life")
• "Hmm, well, we'll have to take appropriate action... What else can we do?"
• "But Lyolik, that isn't aesthetic!" -- "But it's cheap, reliable and pragmatic." (rhymes nicely in Russian: "Лёлик, но это же не эстетично!" - "Зато дешево, надежно и практично.")
• "I'll punch (you) carefully, but hard..."
• "Our people don't take a taxi to the bakery!" (In Russian: "Наши люди в булочную на такси не ездят!"

The song "About Hares" from the film became a popular drinking song.

This episode was unusually explicit for a Soviet movie.	Anatoly Papanov as Lyolik and Svetlana Svetlichnaya as Anna.	Yuri Nikulin as Semyon Semyonovich Gorbunkov and Stanislav Chekan as Mikhail Ivanovich.	Yuri Nikulin as Semyon Semyonovich Gorbunkov and Grigori Shpigel and Leonid Kanevsky as Contrabandists.
Yuri Nikulin as Semyon Semyonovich Gorbunkov and Andrei Mironov as Gesha

• Brilliantovaya ruka at the Internet Movie Database
• Trailer and Screenshots