--- title: "The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!" year: 1966 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-russians-are-coming-the-russians-are-coming" fi1m_score: 70 critics_reviews: 3 published: "2026-09-20T04:47:36.146530+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T04:47:46.585199+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (1966) Directed by Norman Jewison · 2h 06m · MPA NR · Comedy, War **Fi1m score: 70** · Critics: 3 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* Alan Arkin invades New England with a phrasebook and better manners than anyone he meets > Norman Jewison’s cold-war farce is louder and longer than it needs to be, but Alan Arkin’s courteous, harassed Soviet lieutenant is a pleasure from his first scene, and the final stretch has a warmth the shouting does not prepare you for. ## Synopsis Gloucester Island, off the Massachusetts coast, on the last weekend of the summer season. A Soviet submarine runs aground on a sandbar in the fog, and its captain (Theodore Bikel) sends Lieutenant Rozanov (Alan Arkin) ashore with a landing party to find a boat that can pull it free. They knock at the summer house of Walt Whittaker (Carl Reiner), a New York playwright packing to leave with his wife Elspeth (Eva Marie Saint) and two children, and try to pass themselves off as Norwegians. Walt wants the strangers out of his house and his family safe; the sailors want a car and a quiet island. The island is not quiet for long. Switchboard operator Alice Foss (Tessie O’Shea) spreads the word, Police Chief Link Mattocks (Brian Keith) tries to keep order, and Fendall Hawkins (Paul Ford) starts raising a militia. ## Review In 1966 the joke was the point: a Soviet submarine runs aground off a New England island and the islanders cannot decide whether to shoot the sailors or offer them coffee. William Rose, adapting Nathaniel Benchley’s novel, wants both, and Norman Jewison stages it as a farce at full volume for 126 minutes. Jewison’s film is good-natured, often funny and frequently too much, and it has one thing in it that is close to perfect. That thing is Alan Arkin. Arkin plays Lieutenant Rozanov, the officer sent ashore to find a boat, as a competent man doing an impossible job with limited English and a great deal of patience. His order to a street full of islanders comes out with the words in the wrong order, and Arkin lets us watch him hear the mistake and decide he has no time to fix it. He is never a buffoon. The comedy comes from a sensible man surrounded by fools of two nationalities, and when he finally loses his temper with Reiner’s Whittaker the film has earned it. We laughed out loud at him several times, which is more than we can say for most of the people chasing him. Carl Reiner, as the playwright with a rented house and a family to get off the island, is the straight man and plays it well, with the tight smile of someone being reasonable at strangers holding a gun. Eva Marie Saint has less to do than she should and does it gracefully. Brian Keith’s police chief is the film’s other adult, growling at his own townspeople because he can see where this is going. Paul Ford’s Fendall Hawkins, the old soldier who raises a militia out of the bar, and Jonathan Winters as Norman Jones, the deputy who cannot stop talking, make most of the noise. Tessie O’Shea’s switchboard operator, tied to a chair and still trying to spread the news, gets the best of the physical gags. Joseph F. Biroc shoots the island as white clapboard and blue water, so that the Russians in their dark uniforms look wrong in every frame, which is the joke and it holds. Johnny Mandel’s score marches the landing party ashore on a Russian-sounding theme and keeps bringing it back, quieter, as the sailors get further from the water. The editors, Hal Ashby and J. Terry Williams, cut the town’s panic as a chain of short scenes, one rumour handed to the next, so that by the time the militia has assembled we have watched a handful of sailors grow into an invasion. Ashby would go on to direct [*Harold and Maude*](https://film.one/film/harold-and-maude), and you can see the timing here. Where it goes wrong is scale. Rose’s script is a small farce, one house, one town, one afternoon and a night, and Jewison directs it as if it were a war film. Every chase has more cars than the last and every crowd more shouting. There is a stretch in the second hour of islanders running up and down the same street that we watched with our patience draining, and we were bored, plainly, for about twenty minutes, which a comedy cannot afford. John Phillip Law’s young sailor and Andrea Dromm’s babysitter have a sweet, quiet romance in the house by the shore, and the film keeps leaving it to put another car in a ditch. And then it pulls itself together. The last stretch, in the harbour, does something we will not describe, and it caught us off guard. After two hours of people yelling at each other across a language barrier, the film finds one plain image of Russians and Americans doing a job together because it needs doing, and it moved us far more than a film this silly had any business managing. It is the scene Rose was writing towards all along. It sits beside *Dr. Strangelove* (1964), which got to the same fear two years earlier and was crueller and funnier; this is the version for people who would rather be reassured than frightened. The title has two exclamation marks. Jewison directs as if he believed both of them, and the film would be better with none. Watch it for Arkin, forgive it the middle, and stay to the end. *Fi1m score 70, published 20 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (3) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (85/100, inferred): The film is an outstanding cold-war comedy depicting the havoc created on a mythical Massachusetts island by the crew of a grounded Russian sub. Alan Arkin is absolutely outstanding in his film debut as the courtly Russian, with strong support from the cast in wild antics centered around the sheriff and civil defense chief. [Read](https://variety.com/1965/film/reviews/the-russians-are-coming-the-russians-are-coming-1200420978/) - **The New York Times**, Robert Alden (80/100, inferred): The film is a credit to its makers for personalizing a dangerous confrontation through broad farce, revealing good and bad in both Russians and Americans and their shared humanity. The talented cast, including a wonderful Alan Arkin in his first full-length film role, plays the farce zestfully under Norman Jewison's direction. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1966/05/26/archives/screen-the-russians-are-comingbroad-farce-arrives-at-three-theaters.html) - **The New Yorker**, Brendan Gill (30/100, inferred): The film ought to have been a funny little farce but turns out to be an unfunny big farce, with the director permitting every moment to become twice as brightly colored, noisy, and frantic as needed. Despite an excellent cast including Alan Arkin, the heavy-handed approach undermines the comical basic notion from the novel. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1966/06/04/moonings) ## Details - **Director:** Norman Jewison - **Director:** Norman Jewison - **Screenplay:** William Rose - **Novel:** Nathaniel Benchley - **Cinematography:** Joseph F. Biroc - **Editor:** Hal Ashby, J. Terry Williams - **Music:** Johnny Mandel - **Producer:** Norman Jewison - **Cast:** Carl Reiner as Walt Whittaker; Eva Marie Saint as Elspeth Whittaker; Alan Arkin as Lt. Rozanov; Brian Keith as Police Chief Link Mattocks; Paul Ford as Fendall Hawkins; Theodore Bikel as The Russian captain; Jonathan Winters as Norman Jones; Tessie O'Shea as Alice Foss - **Runtime:** 2h 06m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 25 May 1966 - **Genres:** Comedy, War - **Budget:** $4 million - **Box office:** $22 million ## Where to watch in the US - Pluto TV: free - Tubi: free, hd, leaving 2026-10-01 - Apple TV: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $2.99, sd - Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, sd - Apple TV: buy $14.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HU, ID, IE, IL, IT, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, PA, PH, PL, PT, SE, SG, TH, UA, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1967: Best Actor (nominated); Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated) ## If you liked this - *Dr. Strangelove* (1964), Fi1m 93: The same fear two years earlier, played as savage comedy rather than a hug. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/dr-strangelove-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-bomb.md) - *One, Two, Three* (1961): Billy Wilder’s Berlin farce, faster and meaner, with Cagney selling Coca-Cola to communists. - *Whisky Galore!* (1949): Ealing islanders against authority, with a shipwreck and a great deal less shouting. - *The Death of Stalin* (2017), Fi1m 83: Soviet farce with real teeth; Iannucci lets nobody on either side off. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-death-of-stalin.md) - *Local Hero* (1983), Fi1m 86: Another stranger washes up on a small coast and the town quietly takes over. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/local-hero.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-russians-are-coming-the-russians-are-coming