One day, news spreads through the village that the Cossack Vasyl has received an important assignment – to deliver a letter to Empress Catherine herself. Hearing about this, the locals begin to turn to him with their requests: some want to convey a request for a miracle potion, others – for punishment for the neighbor who broke up the family. However, these are all trifles compared to the main mission of the hero.
Before the long journey, his strict father blesses him, even giving him some magic tobacco to protect his son from troubles and dark forces. It seems that the path does not promise any particular difficulties, but soon Vasyl meets the cunning devil and the Zaporozhian Cossack Andriy. Together they continue their journey, but misfortune is not long in coming: an evil witch steals Vasyl’s hat, which contains the letter. Now the main character must urgently find the missing document, because the empress is already waiting for him in her palace.
Differences from the original work
Although the film is named after the story of the same name by Nikolai Gogol (1831), its script differs significantly from the literary source. As screenwriter Ivan Drach said, the script had to be rewritten seven or eight times – first due to management requirements, then due to budget constraints. As a result, only the main frame remained from Gogol’s plot, and the film itself received a much richer plot.
Literary critic Igor Ostapenko noted that the events of the film only partially echo Gogol’s text, since his original story did not have enough dynamic development for a film adaptation. Drach filled it with new inserted episodes, using motifs from the works of Oleksa Storozhenko, Hryhoriy Kvitka-Osnovyanenko, Marko Kropyvnytskyi, and folk parables.
One of these new storylines was the story of Odarka – a girl who, against her will, became a witch. This idea was borrowed from Oleksa Storozhenko’s story “The Devil in Love”, which made the picture even more colorful and multi-layered.
“The Lost Diploma” is not just a film, but a real treasure of Ukrainian cinema, combining historical events, folk humor and mystical motifs, making it unique in its genre.
- Director: Borys Ivchenko
- Screenwriter: Ivan Drach
- Starring: Ivan Mykolaychuk, Fedir Stryhun, Lidiya Vakula, Zemfira Tsakhilova, Mykhailo Holubovych, Volodymyr Glukhy, Vasyl Symchych, Anatoliy Barchuk
- Cinematographer: Vitaliy Zymovets
- Film company: Dovzhenko Film Studio
- Duration: 79 minutes
- Year of release: 1972