Estonia probably doubled as all Western countries in Soviet cinema; it was in particular the go-to location for adaptations of Western classics.
Just like the way that all "19th-century" urban locations in modern BBC productions get shot in Eastern Europe, because England simply doesn't have that sort of street scene available any more (at least unless you're going to spend a lot of time in post-production editing out TV aerials, satellite dishes, double-glazed picture windows, yellow lines on tarmac streets, etc :-p)
Of course the Soviet Union had the advantage of having a much wider spread of 'domestic' scenery available. If they had been shooting Star Wars in the USSR, they wouldn't have needed to go to Tunisia, but would simply have headed off to Bukhara (where the Uzbek director from an Odessa studio proceeded to take his Moscow- and Leningrad-born cast to film desert scenes in what I assume was intended to be Algiers, for the purposes of "The Man in the Iron Mask" -- I haven't actually seen the third film yet, partly because I'm telling myself I want to improve my Russian first and partly because I'm afraid I shan't enjoy it as much as the first two...)
The various 'chateaux' in the Ukraine that were used as stand-ins for the French countryside looked extremely convincing, at least to my eyes (possibly just 'foreign European classical architecture' as opposed to authentically French, as I suspect I can't really tell the difference). But the attempts to show glimpses of England during d'Artagnan's brief mission there are utterly unconvincing to the native eye -- even the rooftops glimpsed when he disembarks are obviously European, and the less said about the Duke of Buckingham's supposed 'castle' the better :-) click to view There is simply no castle in England, let alone English country house, that looks even remotely like that -- all it needs is an onion dome or a few little cupolas :-p
I thought the 1980s were hideous even back when they were 'modern', and I still think they're hideous now that they are fashionably nostalgic. SO the 1970s styles look relatively normal by comparison (it helps that in many ways they were having a 1940s revival at the time...) There is something to be said even for flares, although not when taken to the extreme...
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2025-09-19 02:39 pm (UTC)Just like the way that all "19th-century" urban locations in modern BBC productions get shot in Eastern Europe, because England simply doesn't have that sort of street scene available any more (at least unless you're going to spend a lot of time in post-production editing out TV aerials, satellite dishes, double-glazed picture windows, yellow lines on tarmac streets, etc :-p)
Of course the Soviet Union had the advantage of having a much wider spread of 'domestic' scenery available. If they had been shooting Star Wars in the USSR, they wouldn't have needed to go to Tunisia, but would simply have headed off to Bukhara (where the Uzbek director from an Odessa studio proceeded to take his Moscow- and Leningrad-born cast to film desert scenes in what I assume was intended to be Algiers, for the purposes of "The Man in the Iron Mask" -- I haven't actually seen the third film yet, partly because I'm telling myself I want to improve my Russian first and partly because I'm afraid I shan't enjoy it as much as the first two...)
The various 'chateaux' in the Ukraine that were used as stand-ins for the French countryside looked extremely convincing, at least to my eyes (possibly just 'foreign European classical architecture' as opposed to authentically French, as I suspect I can't really tell the difference). But the attempts to show glimpses of England during d'Artagnan's brief mission there are utterly unconvincing to the native eye -- even the rooftops glimpsed when he disembarks are obviously European, and the less said about the Duke of Buckingham's supposed 'castle' the better :-)
There is simply no castle in England, let alone English country house, that looks even remotely like that -- all it needs is an onion dome or a few little cupolas :-p
I thought the 1980s were hideous even back when they were 'modern', and I still think they're hideous now that they are fashionably nostalgic. SO the 1970s styles look relatively normal by comparison (it helps that in many ways they were having a 1940s revival at the time...) There is something to be said even for flares, although not when taken to the extreme...