White Sun of the Desert (Russian: Белое солнце пустыни, romanized: Beloye solntse pustyni) is a 1970 Soviet Ostern film.

[1] Its blend of action comedy, music and drama made it highly successful at the Soviet box-office and resulted in a number of memorable quotes.

Its main theme song, "Your Noble Highness Lady Fortune" (Ваше благородие, госпожа удача, music: Isaac Schwartz, lyrics: Bulat Okudzhava, performed by Pavel Luspekayev) became a hit.

[3] The setting is the east shore of the Caspian Sea (modern Turkmenistan) where the Red Army soldier Fyodor Sukhov has been fighting the Civil War in Russian Asia for a number of years.

The cavalry unit commander, Rakhimov, leaves to Sukhov's temporary protection the harem of the Basmachi leader Abdullah, left behind by him.

Rakhimov also leaves a young Red Army soldier, Petrukha, to assist Sukhov, and proceeds to pursue the fleeing Abdullah.

Hoping to obtain help and weapons, Sukhov and Petrukha visit Pavel Vereschagin, a former Tsar's customs official.

Sukhov and the women of the harem attempt to escape through the passage, but on arriving at the seashore they are impelled to hide in a large empty oil tank.

[9] His skills in riding are demonstrated when he jumps on a horse, back first, while walking backwards and keeping his enemy at gunpoint.

Firstly, Konchalovsky thought only American actors could pull off the part of a lead role in a western, and secondly the screenplay was considered weak.

[4] A war veteran told Yezhov a story of a harem abandoned by a Basmachi leader on the run, which became the pivot of the new script.

Motyl completely reshaped and put forward the character of Vereschagin – all his dialogues, as well as about 60% of the entire script, were rewritten and improvised during the filming.

The dune scenes were demanding for actors, who had to make large circles in the scorching heat to approach the shooting location without leaving telltale traces in the sand.

However, the heaviest burden fell on Mishulin, who spent in total several days in a box buried in sand while preparing for several takes of the opening scene.

[16] Horse riding scenes were performed by the special stunt unit formed for the War and Peace film series.

[6][17] The film involved two dangerous stunts, the first when Abdullah's officer, supposedly thrown out by Vereschagin, breaks through a second-floor window and falls to the sand below.

[16] A line from this song, "Nine grams into your heart, wait, don't call," is included as an homage in the script of the 1985 Soviet action film The Detached Mission.

[citation needed] It was shown at a Soviet film festival at the Little Carnegie Theatre in 1973, meant to tie in with Leonid Brezhnev's visit to the United States.

Roger Greenspun, the New York Times movie critic, classified it as an "escapist entertainment" (together with another Soviet film, a comedy Ivan Vassilyevich Changes His Profession) and describes it as a "picaresque adventure".

2009) and Samara (2012)[27] All crew members boarding Russian space flights are committed to watch "White Sun of the Desert" before the launch,[28][29][30] and the names of Abdullah's wives are assigned to craters on Venus: Зарина, Джамиля, Гюзель, Саида, Хафиза, Зухра, Лейла, Зульфия, Гюльчатай.