Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Soviet Policeman Caught in Icelandic Net

So, the headline above showed up in one of the feeds in my RSS reader. Why am I posting about it here? Never mind that the headline itself seems interesting, the one-paragraph teaser that accompanies the RSS article continues as follows"

The mystery reels fished up by lobster fishermen in Faxaflói bay earlier this month are from a Soviet film from 1968.

OK, now it makes more sense. There was apparently an article a week ago that somehow I missed in the RSS reader titled Fishermen Find Mystery Movie. To the Icelanders, of course, it would be a pretty big movie, since it's a couple of reels of an obviously foreign-language movie. Even if 10 minutes of some random 30s B movie showed up, it would throw most Americans for a loop, and I think even a lot of us who are faithful TCM viewers would have to stop and think for a bit. This is even more so for production stills. Even when it's easy to identify the actors, knowing which movie it's from is a more difficult proposition.

Anyhow, the folk's at Iceland's film archive mentioned this find on their social media, and sure enough, somebody was able to figure out what it was. Specifically, it's a 1968 Soviet movie about a village police officer. If you read the article, you'll find out a bit more about the story, as well as a wonderful photo of the film laid out to dry. How it survived decades in the ocean is beyond me.

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