The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed: Postwar Moscow on Screen

Moscow, August to November 1945: Sharapov, fresh from the front, joins the anti-banditry squad of Captain Zheglov. When the detained thief Kirpich is brought to Police Station No. 17, he lets slip the name of a bandit the officers have never heard of: Fox. It is the thread that will lead the squad to the Black Cat gang. The station was filmed in a Moscow mansion at the intersection of the Garden Ring and Olympic Avenue.

Location precision: The film never shows the real address; the pin marks Olympic Avenue where it meets the Garden Ring, the intersection the production notes name.

Zheglov and Sharapov follow the trail to the Bolshoi Theatre, where they detain the thief Ruchechnik and his partner Volokushina. She tells them that Fox has a contact telephone number, the first solid lead on him. The scene, called "The Stolen Fur Coat", was shot inside the real theatre and was complicated by the special security there. The theatre's neoclassical facade is today printed on the Russian 100-ruble banknote.

Visitor guidance: A working opera and ballet house; its neoclassical facade is the one on the 100-ruble banknote.

To trap Fox, the officers plan a stakeout in the Astoria restaurant. The whole task force, posing as vacationers, sits down to dinner until Sharapov recognizes Fox; Fox senses the ambush and runs, but is caught. On screen the Astoria was the Central Restaurant on Gorky Street, the name Tverskaya Street carried between 1935 and 1990.

Location precision: The film used the Central Restaurant on Gorky Street, but the exact building is not named in the source; the pin marks Tverskaya Street.

Visitor guidance: Tverskaya Street runs from the Garden Ring; it was named Gorky Street from 1935 to 1990.

Filming began on 10 May 1978, and the interiors went up in the pavilions of the Odesa Film Studio: Sharapov's communal apartment, the basement of the store, Larisa Gruzdeva's apartment and the MUR offices. Only the interrogation of Ruchechnik was shot in a real Moscow merchant's apartment. The studio still stands at 33 French Boulevard in Odesa.

Moscow in the 1970s looked very different from the capital of 1945, so some outdoor scenes were filmed in Odesa instead. These include the walk-through courtyards of the chase, the robbed warehouse and the billiard room, which was in Shevchenko Park. The park opened on 7 September 1875 as Alexander Park, and has carried the poet's name since 1954.

Location precision: The source places the billiard room somewhere in the park; the pin marks the park, not a building.

Visitor guidance: A public park in central Odesa.