Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession is a film capable of appealing to audiences outside the Soviet Union with its universally smart humor. From the onset it is obviously influenced by Western cinema; one cannot tell if Shurik's bedroom is Russian or American until Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov begins playing from the TV. This homogeneous consumer culture is evident all throughout the film, especially in the luxuries of Shpak's apartment, the electronics black market, and the character of Shurik's wife (in the dream plot line). In fact, Shurik's wife in the separate dream world seems almost a caricature of Hollywood with her posters and dreams of falling in love with Yakin and finding fame. Gaidai's camera work utilizes quick photography. This is exemplified in the episode in which Miloslavsky is robbing Shpak's apartment and cannot get out; Gaidai cuts to the many faces of statues and paintings that, in context, are shocked and seem to mock him. This is an amusing riff on the Kuleshov Effect. The sets themselves are also fantastic, and Ivan's (the tsar, not the bureaucrat) palace appears lifted straight out of Eisenstein's 1947 feature. Ivan Vasilievich (both of them), too, is an exact copy of Eisenstein's tsar, pointy beard and all! These visual homages would have been obvious, one assumes, to Russian audiences of the time and surely would have made it all the more comedic. However, Gaidai's humor is not intrinsically Russian, like earlier Soviet comedies, but appeals internationally. The humor lies in the situational: the police/Oprichniki chase, the switching of identities, the mad scientist, even a regal food fight. The only context clues to the time are slight jabs at Soviet rations, the black market, and housing codes. These tropes give the film the ability to transcend the trappings of a fifteen- minute fame, and allow it to be just as funny, if not more, decades later.

play with history. ironic image of Soviet society. old recipes for entertainment with big success. in fact, a fresco of a life style. a kind of testimony. preoccupation for science, seduction of past, the small family problems as way to present political errors, the gangs, the time travel, a czar and an innocent inventor.a slice of Communism. strange for public beyond the Iron Curtain, amusing in a profound sense for the public of ex - satellites states of U.S.S.R.,source of touching memories and piece of great art of cinema. but essence of this film is just definition of freedom. and the exploration of accidents as seeds of transformation. sure, recreation of old Russia, humanization of Ivan the Terrible, the smart thief and the not very clever house manager are crumbs of seductive kind of resistance against a regime. but, after years, more important is the delicious humor. nothing else.

For those Americans who cannot understand the movie and appreciate it entirely, I suggest that you watch it for its visual value. I myself have moved out of Russia when I was 7 so I did not get to study the history culture and language of Russia that much, so movie like these I use as an educational tool. I've learned a lot about the clothes, speech, and history from this movie than I did anywhere else. My heart is more in this than perhaps yours might be, but educationally this film is worth it, as well as providing humor and fun. It's not a preachy, soapy, cramped kind of comedy. It is fast paced, energetic, and fun.

I would like to propose to IMDb to unmercifully deny Americans to comment foreign (to them) movies, especially when everything they have ever heard of a country which the movie is made in /times it describes was/is a cliché. You cannot comment something you don't understand and especially when you cannot possibly understand it in lifetime. Likewise you cannot comment Pythagorus theorem when you're not mathematician or Eifel Tower if you are not architect, you cannot criticize gem of comedy for being silly when you don't understand it in first place. You can, however, tell the others that its been silly TO YOU, just because YOU are used to toilet-drawn "humor", with silliness and stupidness you see in every modern American comedy which has gone its way from stardom in 50's to 80s to total drop down quality nowadays. _Shoe maker, do not watch above the shoes!_ And leave masterpieces like this one alone. If you're American, this is probably not your movie for the evening. Go grab the American Pie 10 instead.