The Girls (1961)

Девчата

A tiny, fearless cook arrives at a Siberian logging camp, and the camp's top lumberjack bets he can win her heart.

Plays from Mosfilm's official YouTube channel. Subtitles start in English; use the CC and ⚙ buttons in the player to change them. Open on YouTube ↗

Year
1961
Director
Yuri Chulyukin
Starring
Nadezhda Rumyantseva, Nikolai Rybnikov, Lyusyena Ovchinnikova
Genre
Comedy, Romance
Running time
1 h 32 min
Based on
The novella by Boris Bedny
Language
Russian, English subtitles
Studio
Mosfilm

About the film

Tosya Kislitsyna, fresh from cooking school, comes to work at a logging camp deep in the taiga. She is small, outspoken and absolutely unimpressed by Ilya, the best and most admired lumberjack in the camp.

Ilya makes a bet with a rival that he will make Tosya fall in love with him within a week. Of course he falls for her instead, and when she finds out about the bet the comedy turns into a sweet, surprisingly moving love story.

The Girls is the most watched video on Mosfilm's YouTube channel, with about 100 million views. Nadezhda Rumyantseva's Tosya, and her famous speech about the many uses of potatoes, are why generations keep coming back to it.

Did you know?

  • It is the most viewed full film on the official Mosfilm channel.
  • Nadezhda Rumyantseva was 30 when she played the teenage Tosya.
  • Tosya's speech about all the dishes you can make from potatoes is one of the most quoted scenes in Soviet comedy.

If you liked The Girls