In Russian-Soviet cinema, comedies are not very good.
Well, just look at the filmography of all the directors, find at least something really funny there.
Well, yes, Volga-Volga is a comedy type, Ryazanov's “five minutes, five minutes is a lot or a little” is also a comedy type, but they are a) rare, b) they are all so politically correct within the framework of the then politics and correctness that they create the impression that they are stupidly toothless.
And only one person encroached on a satirical interpretation of reality, and we all know this person - Leonid Iovich Gaidai.
That is, a really funny, gushing punchlines in the history of local cinema turned out to be a person with the most unfunny fate, and by sight he was rather closed and unhappy.
Leonid Gaidai did not have cool parents - Job Isidorovich was from serfs, his mother, Maria Ivanovna, was from the Ryazan region.
His entire creative career in cinema - an amazing flight on the social elevator to top directors - looks especially strange now, when for a decade already, professions in our cinema have simply been inherited and belong to the same surnames.
A boy from the village of Svobodny, Amur Region, who graduated from a railway school (I wonder if there is a portrait of him in Lyceum No. 36 of the Russian Railways Company, which is now there?) - what would be his life now?
It is a historical fact that two days after leaving school, he went to enroll for the front - on June 23, 1941.
It is clear that he was turned up from the recruiting station.
But in November he had already hit as much as necessary, and yesterday's schoolboy went to the front.
That’s the end of childhood.
What was the psychological breakdown of the future artist, it is difficult for us to judge, because on this score the people of that generation did not spread very much and did not suck their experiences.
In general, people who mumble something about the comfort zone and the impossibility of realizing oneself at a time when the damned regime slips you instead of a raspberry smoothie - strawberry, this generally cannot be understood by a cannon shot.
Interestingly, on what basis he was sent as a "Red Army infantry reconnaissance", again - yesterday's schoolboy.
That is, they were sent in front of the regiment to see exactly where the enemy was, but if he ran into the Germans, figure it out yourself.
Such things produce early explosive "personal growth" without any coach.
Well, actually, that's how it exploded.
That is, he was blown up by an infantry mine and was treated for eight months.
Thanks for being alive.
They didn’t take him back to the front.
He returned to Irkutsk and - oh, luck! - in the then Irkutsk Regional Drama Theater, in fact, the Moscow Theater of Satire was evacuated, where he went to work as a stage worker, a lighting fixture - a basic acquaintance with the smell of the wings took place. He also watched all the performances. And the word "satire", even in the form in which it existed in the country, was embedded in his head. Further - the theater studio in the same place. And a couple of years later - the directing department of VGIK.
Everyone who came across him then - from students to teachers - noticed something powerful and deep in this thin, wounded, silent guy: he clearly had something to say to the world and hail. In an amazing way, he was supported by a variety of people - from Pyryev, for whom the glory of the main monster of Soviet cinema and an abuser from an Old Believer family is now entrenched, to Mikhail Romm, the son of Jewish socialist demons, all exiled to the same Irkutsk. They were all united with a strange student by one thing - an unprecedented intensity of fate, a fantastic social lift under the Soviet regime, under the supervision of the monstrous Stalin, whom they took to equal fashion with the monstrous Hitler. And they all fought - some in the Civil, some in the Patriotic War. And these people would not appreciate your comparisons.
In his last year, Leonid Gaidai took another person of fantastic fate to his film crew - director Boris Barnet, who was generally a Soviet Englishman from a dispossessed family of owners of a printing house that stood on the right bank of the Moskva River in the center of the city.
And he also fought in the Red Army.
He himself was quite by accident found in the boxing ring by Lev Kuleshov himself, one of the founders of VGIK.
Courses at the Irkutsk Regional Theater worked - Gaidai was invited to the film "Liang" as an actor, as well as a director-trainee. So it appears in the credits next to two other directors - K. Nikolaevich and Marlen Khutsiev. An ingenious musical comedy about the amateur performance of the Moldovan viticultural collective farm. Here with the young Gaidai is played by the young Radner Muratov - an actor who has inscribed himself in the history of Russian comedy as Vasily Alibabaevich ("Gentlemen of Fortune"). Certainly, some of the things in the film are shocking now - for example, transporting people in open trucks (which was forbidden a long time ago) and hats. Where did they get such fancy hats in 1955? And also the young Gaidai is the spitting image of David Byrne from the Talking Heads group.
But Gaidai's first film should be considered "The Long Way" (1956) - a melodrama by today's standards. He shot it together with director Valentin Nevzorov. Nevzorov is an unsung song of Soviet cinema, it is no coincidence that few have heard of him. He was also a front-line soldier and partisan, he managed to shoot only two films and died. The film based on the Siberian stories of the honorary academician of the Imperial Academy of Sciences Vladimir Korolenko begins with the credits: “From St. Petersburg to Moscow, 600 miles. From Moscow to Perm 1600 versts. From Perm to Irkutsk - 7 thousand miles ”. Again this Irkutsk, which did not let go of either Romm or Gaidai himself. It seems that this was the last generation of Russian filmmakers who literally felt the intolerable expanses of their own country with their fingers.It will only get worse - the filmmakers who have locked themselves in a golden tin can in Moscow will turn into a caste at the checkout and concentrate on their career battles under the Mosfilm carpet.
The cast to match: Kunna Ignatova, who was called the national treasure of Yakutia;
Sergei Yakovlev, a front-line soldier from Kurgan, from a family of repressed;
Vladimir Belokurov from Kazan, from the family of a rural priest;
Nikifor Kolofidin from Krasnoyarsk, actor of the Primorsky Theater of Vladivostok;
Alexander Antonov - the same sailor on the poster for Battleship Potemkin;
Apollo Yachnitsky from the Russian Drama Theater in Kiev.
What human characters, what fate - these actors themselves could become heroes of stories and movies.
For some reason, it was in the work on this picture that Mikhail Romm, who took care of Gaidai, saw him as a comedian and began to push him towards this particular genre.
But it was in this field from the very beginning that he received the first professional hook to the jaw.
In 1958 he removes The Groom from the Other World based on the play by Vladimir Dykhovichny and Maurice Slobodsky.
It was a typical Soviet satire - a duty ridicule of the soulless lower-level bureaucrats: in Mayakovsky's "Bedbug" or "Bath" it turned out to be more incendiary.
But the painting was disliked by the Minister of Culture Nikolai Mikhailov, a man with a parish school and three courses in journalism at Moscow State University, who spent the whole war in Moscow on rations from the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
In short, the story about the head of a meaningless office, who was declared dead alive, was repaired from a full meter to a 40-minute short film.
The main role was played by Rostislav Plyatt, whose Polish chic will lead to a string of roles of imposing foreigners and Pastor Schlag.
Surprisingly, years later the same Polish chic and look will completely destroy the film career of the amazing comedian Igor Okrepilov (Akimov Theater).
There is also Georgy Vitsin, who will become one of Gaidai's talismans, and even Maria Kravchunovskaya ("Granny is God's dandelion" in Gaidai's Operation Y).
Another Gaidai "mascot" was cut out of the film - Evgeny Morgunov, as well as Sergei Filippov and Faina Ranevskaya.
But losses are losses.
But one acquisition took place, which largely determined Gaidai's style and success for many years - screenwriter and writer Maurice Slobodskoy.
Together with him, Gaidai will do Operation Y, Prisoner of the Caucasus and Diamond Hand - three megahits of the national comedy.
Romm's advice came out sideways, but then there was advice from another guardian of Gaidai - Pyriev himself. He invited him to master patriotic cinema. The film was called "Thrice Resurrected" based on the story "The steamer is called" Eaglet ", and 12 years after the release, the film ceased to exist for one single reason - the story belonged to the pen of Alexander Galich, who fell into disgrace.
And then Pyryev's bestial instinct returned Gaidai to the path of comedy - he conceived an almanac of comedy short films by young directors, and for him Gaidai shot a ten-minute "Watchdog Dog and an Unusual Cross" (1961).
It all came together at once: the Vitsin - Morgunov - Nikulin trio, and the archetypal plot (which is found at least in the works of a couple of foreign authors), which turned out to be close to the most popular audience.
Because he himself, the public viewer, was not at all alien to poaching.
And also the release of the film coincided with the appearance of everyday Soviet cinema projectors on 8 mm "Luch" and "Luch-2", for which such short films that could be watched in a silent version, such as "Dog Watchdog", "Spy Passions" and, of course , Gaidai's next film "Moonshiners", were printed in large circulation.
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Thus, Gaidai entered directly into the apartments of Soviet citizens, bypassing the cinemas.
The trio of performers Vitsin - Nikulin - Morgunov also represented the perfect archetype of folk crooks, so much so that they quickly became a pop icon. It is no coincidence that for a new generation of artists born around 1958, they were a kind of can of Campbell soup or Elvis for Americans. Suffice it to recall the work of Konstantin Zvezdochetov, one of the most successful artists of this generation. "Coward, Goonies, Experienced" is a frequent subject of his work. I don’t know how it is now, but in the 1980s Konstantin Zvezdochetov created a mosaic with this trio on the wall of a soldier's canteen in the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky autobat part within the framework of the “demobilization chord”. It seems that the political commander would now tear his hair out after learning how much this mosaic could cost at the Sotheby's auction, but then we were just having fun.
In 1962, Gaidai conducts an experiment with American classical humor of the beginning of the century: three stories by O. Henry under the general title "Business People" are high-quality work and remain in my memory, but, of course, Gaidar's vocation as a comedian was different.
Namely - without bored administrative satire, laughingly describe the life of an ordinary Soviet person, the way everyone describes it for himself, trying to find something good in the wildest situation.
With the classic trinity of performers, adding the image of a student Shurik (Alexander Demyanenko) for the perfect drama, Gaidai entered the era of his main blockbusters - "Operation Y" and other adventures of Shurik.
The film is actually also an almanac - there are three almost unrelated novels, which you immediately forget about, perceiving the film as a whole.
Gaidai bought the young intelligentsia in the image of Shurik.
Here, in an amazing way, he also violated all sorts of social taboos - "an intellectual with spectacles whips the proletariat with rods."
And the proletariat is the sacred cow of communist propaganda.
Some of the young cinematographers considered the scene in which the young Shurik makes the violent Fedya (actor Smirnov) - by the age of a front-line soldier - lie down, an imitation of a submachine gun fire.
But this is not a joke for young urban idlers: Gaidai was a front-line soldier and Alexei Smirnov was a front-line soldier, and they knew what they were doing.
Kostyukovsky and Slobodskoy introduced into the minds of the Soviet viewer such a number of punchlines, which is still enough, - all these “Announce the entire list, please”, “Who is disabled here?
- What are you making noise?
I am disabled ”,“ It is necessary, Fedya, it is necessary ”,“ Grandma is God's dandelion ”,“ Half a liter?
To smithereens?
Yes, I you-I-I ”and so on.
The trouble is that Soviet, and even more so Russian, cinema is clinically poor in vivid phrases that diverge in quotations, define sociocultural strata in society and connect close-minded people.
This is both the level of the scriptwriters and the general principles of presenting the script material - they are not too targeted at the end user.
For example, in crappy Hollywood, the success of films for tens of years has been measured, among other things, by successful phrases, even such stupid ones as I'll be back, which, like hamsters, are repeated by viewers all over the world.
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The image of Shurik surprisingly rhymes with the image of Alexander Privalov from the increasingly popular "Monday ..." by the Strugatskikhs, which came out a year before "Operation Y". It seems that Alexander Demyanenko could safely, without changing pants and shirts, and most importantly, play the actor's paint programmer Alexander (Shurik) Privalov, if someone in those years undertook to film "PNVS".
And it is wonderful that Gaidai replaced the composer and instead of the mossy Nikita Bogoslovsky, whose achievements remained at the level of Jenny's Song in 1937, he took Alexander Zatsepin, a composer with a worthy destiny (himself from Novosibirsk, his father pulled the top ten for counter-revolutionary activities, learned to play armies are all signs of a decent person). Moreover, his progressiveness led to the fact that by the seventies Zatsepin became one of the most important figures in Soviet electronic music.
His new blockbuster, in which many did not believe, including Yuri Nikulin, "The Prisoner of the Caucasus, or Shurik's New Adventures", released in 1967, turned out to be a fist in a velvet glove, since he was much more vicious inwardly. Mimish circus girl Varley, alcohol-smeared Shurik, songs sharpened to the hits from Zatsepin, fashionable twist performed by Aida Vedischeva - all this is just a sweet cream smeared on a stale sandwich of rejection of unbridled ethnic groups and their "traditions". The author then went along the edge of satire and ethnic clichés, talking about which are now destroying satire itself as a genre throughout the "civilized world". I'm afraid they'd shut his mouth now.
The Diamond Arm (1968) is devoid of all these pitfalls.
I would even say that she is devoid of flaws in principle - an ideal story, ideal characters, phenomenal casting.
A somewhat strange image of the Chief - there are some absurdities there, but on the whole we have a sunny, dynamic and very funny picture, with kilograms of punchlines, percussive remarks, sold into quotes.
If we consider the work of Zatsepin, then everything except the main hit "Help me" is worth every minute of sounding.
There is one important problem with the song "Help me": the verses (except for the chorus) are a direct, literal quote from the song Sway, aka ¿Quién será?
Pablo Bertrand Ruiz 1953
We will consider Zatsepin a postmodernist.
Gaidai and Nikulin received the State Prize of the RSFR im.
brothers Vasiliev.
Then, publicly, the fees from the cinemas did not count, so that there would be no questions about where the gigantic money went, but the film was watched almost 77 million times.
And I know for sure that 12 of them are me.
The 1971 painting "12 Chairs" is considered good for some reason.
But when it is based on a work that thoroughly vulgarizes the Gogol tradition, then cinema already looks like a vulgarizer of a vulgarizer.
And when in the screen text there are senseless remarks from the amazing Sergei Filippov like "Yeah", it becomes clear that the scriptwriters did not cope with the original source.
This is a frequent occurrence, the most catastrophic example is the film adaptation of Three Men in a Boat by Naum Birman based on a script by Semyon Lungin.
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A popular hit was the painting "Ivan Vasilyevich Changes His Profession" in 1973 based on Bulgakov's vague motives. Despite the spreading and rather meaningless plot (someone can remember that this film - well, here's the story, except for individual gags - seems to be empty). Yakovlev's image of Ivan Vasilyevich completely coincides with Repin's painting "Sadko" in 1876, which is kept in the Russian Museum. All the actors work to the limit of their capabilities, but a certain fatigue is already felt - suddenly aged Shurik (Demyanenko) radiates disappointment, not to mention the fact that the actor with excellent instinct Yuri Nikulin simply refused to act in this film, which nevertheless became the leader of the Soviet rental. Quotes from it are also in widespread use, but already cause some feeling of awkwardness in some of the audience.
In 1975, an almanac based on the stories of Zoshchenko, "It Can't Be!" with a percussion staff: Mikhail Pugovkin, Oleg Dal, Georgy Vitsin, Savely Kramarov and so on. But the reaction of the public is rather restrained. Maybe the audience is not so fond of Zoshchenko as someone thinks. But the lyrics of the song "It is not beer that ruins people" was reeled on a mustache.
It becomes clear that something is happening to Gaidai.
He begins to hide behind the shadows of great ancestors in creativity, instead of staying on this earth, here and now.
Hence - the third film adaptation of Gogol "The Inspector General" called "Incognito from St. Petersburg".
Everything is fine in the frame: Stanislav Chekan, Papanov, Mordyukova, Kuravlev, Oleg Anofriev, Sergey Filippov, Shirvindt, Nosik, but this whole traveling circus no longer pleases anyone - neither the director himself nor the viewer.
It is believed that the role of Khlestakov brought fame to the actor Sergei Migitsko.
A double Russian-Finnish film adaptation of the story "Behind the Matches", which was written in 1910 under the female pseudonym Maya Lassila by the Finnish journalist Algot Untola.
Untola was a rather murky type, inclined in places to political terror.
During the Finnish Civil War, he played on the red side and lost.
In Russia, Mikhail Zoshchenko translated him when he was deprived of his main income.
"Double", because there are two versions of the film with different editing and with different songs: Finnish and Russian.
Cozy Yevgeny Leonov is in the lead role.
Well, in general, regarding the literary basis, I choose "Year of the Hare" by Arto Paasilinn.
But Gaidai is growing somewhat tired - his next film "Sportloto 82", although it became the leader of the Soviet film distribution, did not impress anyone who at least somehow understands cinema.
Dull script, gray casting.
Some speculators and discouraging swindlers are in the running.
Maybe he was so influenced by the atmosphere in society.
Maybe there were some personal reasons.
It is no wonder that the next film is "Dangerous for life!"
(1985) now, few people remember.
Gaidai himself treated him with coolness.
But these were already years when expectations of change were felt on the threshold.
And the saddest thing is that people who started under tremendous pressure and managed to make masterpieces at the same time, as the pressure from the state (which itself could not cope with itself) was relieved, it was as if the will to live and to create was evaporated from them. ...
And filmed in the midst of perestroika just before the collapse of the USSR, "Private detective, or Operation" Cooperation "(1989) seems to confirm this thesis.
When in the script the owner of the cooperative toilet is seriously stated as a sign of the times, it is clear that the classic got to the bottom of the mice.
And the final "The weather is good on Deribasovskaya, or it is raining again on Brighton Beach" of 1992 - some kind of apotheosis of vulgarity.
The tragedy of the great master is simply visible.
One of the few representatives of auteur cinema in our history.
But do you know what makes you happy, especially now that we have lived a long and uninteresting life since that very 1992?
Thanks in the credits to Donald Trump.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.