The Diamond Arm

The Diamond Arm
Film poster
Directed byLeonid Gaidai
Written byLeonid Gaidai
Yakov Kostyukovsky
Moris Slobodskoy
StarringYuri Nikulin
Nina Grebeshkova
Andrei Mironov
Anatoli Papanov
Nonna Mordyukova
CinematographyIgor Chernykh
Edited byValentina Yankovskaya
Music byAleksandr Zatsepin
Distributed byMosfilm
Release date
  • 28 April 1969 (1969-04-28)
Running time
100 minutes
CountrySoviet Union
LanguageRussian

The Diamond Arm (Russian: Бриллиантовая рука Brilliantovaya ruka) is a Soviet crime comedy film made by Mosfilm and first released in 1969. The film was directed by director Leonid Gaidai and starred several famous Soviet actors, including Yuri Nikulin, Andrei Mironov, Anatoli Papanov, Nonna Mordyukova and Svetlana Svetlichnaya. The Diamond Arm has become a Russian cult film and is considered by many Russian contemporaries to be one of the finest comedies of all time. It was also one of the all-time leaders at the Soviet box office with over 76,700,000 theatre admissions in the Soviet era. The plot of the film was based on a real-life news item about Swiss smugglers who tried to transport jewels in an orthopedic cast.