Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future (1973)

This Soviet movie (Иван Васильевич меняет профессию - in Russian) was a pretty good movie. Of course there are many Communist references - since it was made in the USSR in the 1970s (ie the good of the collective, house registration, comrades, etc.) Despite those references I think the film would appeal to many people. It looks and feels like a '70s movie made in Western Europe or the US. That says something since many other Soviet films made in the 1970s feel like they were really from the 1950s or 1960s.

I thought the story was well thought out. A man creates a time machine where he sends two people from the 1970s to the time of Czar Ivan the Terrible (the 1500s) and brings Ivan the Terrible to 1970s Moscow. Even though the Soviet Union was officially atheist the movie had many references to religion which I found interesting and made me wonder what Soviet audiences would have thought of them.

The film was a light-hearted comedy and while I didn't get all the jokes (because they were either Communist based or about the 1970s) it was still easy to follow the story.

The movie was made more than 10 years before the American "Back to the Future" series of movies, but it still has the same basic flow of those other movies. It makes me wonder if the director of "Back to the Future" had seen this movie and used bits and pieces in his film.