General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming

The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming is a 1966 American Cold War comedy directed and produced by Norman Jewison, in which the crew of a Soviet submarine that runs aground on a sandbar off a New England island tries to avoid an international incident while the island's residents panic over an imagined invasion.¹^•² It was released by United Artists on 25 May 1966, runs 126 minutes, and earned four Academy Award nominations and two Golden Globe wins.¹^•³

Key fact	Detail
Release	25 May 1966 (New York); Los Angeles opening 17 June 1966; 126 minutes, color¹
Source	Adapted by William Rose from Nathaniel Benchley's 1961 novel The Off-Islanders¹
Principal cast	Alan Arkin (Lt. Rozanov), Carl Reiner, Eva Marie Saint, Brian Keith, Jonathan Winters, Theodore Bikel, Paul Ford, John Phillip Law¹
Awards	Four Oscar nominations for 1966: Actor (Arkin), Adapted Screenplay (Rose), Film Editing (Hal Ashby and J. Terry Williams), Best Picture; Golden Globe wins for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, and Best Actor, Musical or Comedy (Arkin)¹^•³
Box office	Nearly $8 million in the U.S., the fifth biggest grosser of 1966; rentals of $7.75 million reported by 4 January 1967⁴^•¹
Cold War standing	The second highest-grossing American Cold War movie of the 1960s and the most Soviet-friendly one, according to historian Tony Shaw⁵
Filming	Fort Bragg, California, 9 September to December 1965¹

Spoilers

Plot

Early one September morning, a Soviet submarine draws too close to the New England coast because its captain wants a good look at America, and it runs aground on a sandbar near an island off Cape Cod.¹ The commander (Theodore Bikel) orders his second-in-command, Lieutenant Rozanov (Alan Arkin), to get the boat moving again before an international incident develops.² Rozanov leads men ashore to find a boat, telling the vacationing television writer Walt Whittaker (Carl Reiner) and his family that the group are Norwegian sailors; failing to convince them, he draws a gun and promises no harm if Walt helps them get a boat so the crew can quietly leave.¹ Word of the landing spreads through the island, the police chief (Brian Keith) has left his excitable assistant (Jonathan Winters) in charge, and the resulting panic among the villagers nearly turns the harmless visit into bloodshed.²^•³

Production

Two studios rejected the film adaptation of Benchley's novel before the Mirisch Corporation and United Artists offered financing to Jewison, approving his plans to film on location with a cast of skilled but lesser-known actors.¹ William Rose's screenplay was written as a foundation for the improvisational talents of Jonathan Winters, Theodore Bikel, Carl Reiner, and Alan Arkin, for whom the role was his first featured screen part.¹

Casting and hardware. Jewison wanted to cast Russian actors as a "cultural exchange" with the USSR, a plan a 1965 Daily Variety letter criticized as hiring "communists"; after an unsuccessful domestic search for Russian-speaking actors and a visit to Czechoslovakia, he interviewed Russian-speaking actors in San Francisco.¹ The U.S. Navy denied his request for a real submarine, explaining that it could not allow its vessels to fly a Soviet flag, so Twentieth Century-Fox supplied the full-scale model submarine used the previous year in Morituri (1965), and the U.S. Air Force loaned a pair of F-101 fighter jets.¹ Filming took place at Fort Bragg, California, where residents served as background actors and were invited to screenings of the rushes.¹

Soviet involvement. According to a 14 June 1966 New York Times report, Soviet officials reviewed the screenplay and recommended giving the Russian characters more authentic names and developing the romance between "Alison" and "Kolchin"; Jewison received no response to his request for an international coproduction.¹ Before release, he screened the picture for Soviet diplomats in Washington, D.C., who objected to the line "Russians are taught to hate Americans," repeated three times in the screenplay. John Phillip Law traveled from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he was filming Hurry Sundown, to re-record the line with "mistrust" and "dislike" in place of "hate," with revised prints expected five days after the New York opening.¹ With United Artists' help, Jewison later took the film to Moscow for two private screenings, one for elite members of the national film workers union.¹

Reception and significance

Reviews were positive. The 26 May 1966 New York Times called the film "rousingly funny--and perceptive," and Variety described it as "an outstanding cold-war comedy depicting the havoc created on a mythical Massachusetts island by the crew of a grounded Russian sub."¹^•⁶ The Washington Post review appeared on the newspaper's editorial page with a prediction that the picture would be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize; the review was reportedly sent to the USSR by the Soviet news agency Tass and cited in a U.S. Senate session by Senator Ernest Gruening of Alaska, who said the film offered insights into "the absurdity of international conflict."¹ The film was listed by the New York Times among the ten best of 1966, won a Photoplay gold medal, and placed second in the 1966 Film Daily poll.¹

Box office. The film took nearly $8 million in the United States and was the fifth biggest grosser of 1966.⁴ Daily Variety reported rentals totaling $7.75 million by 4 January 1967.¹ In a 2010 study in Film History, Tony Shaw, a historian at the University of Hertfordshire, ranked it the second highest-grossing American Cold War movie of the 1960s and the most Soviet-friendly one, and used it to question whether Hollywood really transformed its attitude toward Soviet communism during the decade.⁵ Jewison and editor Hal Ashby, who cut the film, treated it as an antiwar picture that stressed the similarities between the opposing sides of the Cold War and humanized the Russian sailors.⁴ Later commentary has described its portrayal of the Russians as an exception to the rule in Western media for years afterward.⁷

Awards

The film received four Academy Award nominations for 1966: Best Picture (producer Norman Jewison), Actor (Alan Arkin), Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (William Rose), and Film Editing (Hal Ashby and J. Terry Williams).¹^•⁸ At the Golden Globes it won Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, and Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy for Arkin, with additional nominations for Rose's screenplay and for Arkin and John Philip Law as New Star of the Year.³ Jewison was nominated for a Directors Guild of America award.¹

A different film of the same title

The title also refers to Die Russen kommen (The Russians Are Coming), an East German film directed by Heiner Carow, shot in 1968, banned before completion, and reconstructed from surviving elements for a premiere on 3 December 1987, with a 2K digital restoration premiering at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2016.⁹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026