This Soviet film tells about real male friendship. Two race car drivers - Ivan Mikhailovich Kukushkin (Evgeny Leonov) and Nikolai Nikolaevich Sergachev (Oleg Yankovsky) - once drove together in the Moskvich-412 racing car, participating in the rally (and at the same time working at AZLK). Ivan and Nikolay traveled a lot together. But one case turned everything upside down: in the Alps they have an accident. Trying to avoid a collision with the Volkswagen Käfer, Ivan lost control, the Moskvich falls into a ditch, and the racers end up in the hospital. After that, Sergachev decided that Kukushkin was already too old, and chose another partner. It was a shock for everyone that they went their separate ways. Just one incident ruined everything. As a result, they turned out to be rivals in the big Blue Pass rally.

At the rally, meanwhile, there were two crashes: the first happened to Bruno Lawrence, who, due to a bad road and a needle, turned over his Izh-412 and drove it into a ditch, thereby knocking down a wing. The second - with "Volga" at number 30, which also crashed due to a bad road and a needle. Sergachev's crew drives past the accident site without stopping to help the victim. During the rest between the stages, Kukushkin once again quarrels with his former partner over the tragedy, but Nikolai explains that he was asleep and entrusted the steering wheel to Spitsyn, who did not stop to help. Sergachev arranges a showdown with Alexander Spitsyn and, when the next stage of the competition begins, slips alcohol from a horn to Spitsyn. Spitsyn falls asleep ... Nikolai's brakes fail and his Moskvich reaches the edge of the cliff and threatens to fall. He cannot jump out of the car, balancing with his weight the sleeping Spitsyn, and keeping the Moskvich from falling into the abyss. The crew rescues Kukushkin, who was following, from death by hooking the car by the bumper with a cable and rolling it out to a safe place. As a result of unsuccessful attempts at braking in the Moskvich, the gearbox failed, and it is impossible to continue the race without repairing it. Ivan wants to help Nikolai, but his partner, Aleksey Shvedov, rushes Kukushkin, who remains the leader of the race. Ivan Mikhailovich with the greatest reluctance leaves a friend doomed to defeat. Passing rivals offer help, but Sergachev refuses.

  ☆Evgeniy Leonov    ☆Oleg Yankovskiy   ☆Georgiy Burkov 

www.imdb.com/title/tt0068647/

Filming took place in different regions of the Soviet Union and abroad. During the preparation, it turned out that Oleg Yankovsky did not know how to drive a car, and a coach was attached to him to teach driving skills [1]. The filmmakers immediately abandoned the generally accepted technology of shooting dialogues inside a moving car using rear projection in the studio pavilion. All scenes were filmed in real conditions using a special attachment of the camera to the car body. The only episode was filmed in the studio due to the impossibility of one of the actors leaving for the expedition. To shoot scenes from a moving "Moskvich" operator with a manual camera 1KSHR sat in the trunk, the lid of which and the rear window of the passenger compartment were dismantled. The actors' dialogues inside the car were filmed from the front with a camera mounted on a frame, which was installed in place of the removed hood. At the same time, the actors performed the launch of the camera independently, and the dirty glass with working wipers increased the reliability. The low light sensitivity of the DS-5M film, on which the main part of the film was filmed, made it imitate the light of car headlights in night scenes with the help of special lighting devices. In some cases, oncoming cars, visible from a moving vehicle, were stationary on the road, and searchlights were placed in front of their hood. To create on the screen the illusion of their movement in the opposite direction, the car from which the shooting was carried out drove twice as fast.

Car racers, masters of sports, Yuri Ivin, Yakov Agishev, Iosif Halperin, Alexander Matveev, Anatoly Pechenkin, Eduard Singurindi, Viktor Shchavelev, Gunar Holm and V. Bubnov, took part in the filming as backup. Two of the last two years earlier performed on "Moskvich-412" in the 1970 London-Mexico rally. Roman Chertov and Alexander Ipatenko worked as consultants.

International Master of Sports Mikhail Titov, who took part in the filming of the film as one of the members of the USSR national rally team, considered that the filmmakers had clearly gone too far in a number of moments with fiction. Like with the episode - when the navigator drinks wine and then sleeps in the back seat. Yes, and racers-dudes such as Sergachev, according to Titov, at that time did not meet.