The Bourne Supremacy.
If you're planning a trip to Russia,you might want to watch a few movies set there,to get yourself into a Russian sort of mood. Finding them,however,could be trickier than you think.
The 1966 five-Oscar-winnerDr Zhivago,the eighth-highest grossing film of all time,is an obvious choice. But,sadly,it was filmed mostly in Spain with quarry dust doubling as snow,and the famous scene in which resistance members charge across Moscow's frozen river … they were actually pounding over a sheet of cast iron.
How aboutGorky Park then,the 1983 crime and corruption thriller also set in the Russian capital? Nyet! The William Hurt vehicle was shot in Helsinki and Stockholm and the Kremlin was,in truth,the ornate interior of Scotland's Glasgow City Chambers.
Anna Karenina.
You think you'd be luckier with a more recent movie,such as the 2017 hit comedyDeath of Stalin,for instance. Ah,maybe not. Most of the exterior shots were filmed in Kiev,Ukraine,as well as in London,with only a few making it to Moscow.
Ironically,Russia has a long-standing and thriving film industry,going back to 1925'sThe BattleshipPotemkin,often cited among the greatest movies ever made. The much-copied (and parodied) Odessa Steps massacre scene was filmed in Odessa in what was then the USSR.
But during the Soviet era,access by Western movie crews was severely restricted and the Finnish and Swedish capitals often doubled for Russian cities. Paradoxically,the one Western film that featured real vision of St Petersburg landmarks (or Leningrad,as it was then) couldn't publicise the fact.
For the 1985 Cold War movieWhite Nights,a travelogue film crew from Finland,known to Soviet authorities for tourist promotions,was hired to surreptitiously film locations for editing into the movie.
Producer Taylor Hackford (Mr Helen Mirren) was frustrated that critics wrongly accused him of using the same old stock shots of Helsinki,but couldn't tell the truth… otherwise the Finnish crew would have been banned from any future work in the USSR.