The premiere of the Soviet drama “Kalina Krasnaya” took place 50 years ago, on March 25, 1974. The film became the last directorial work of Vasily Shukshin. He also wrote the script and played the main character, former prisoner Yegor Prokudin.
Shukshin's hero, a repeat offender nicknamed Gore, leaves prison and goes to the village to visit Lyuba Baikalova (Lidiya Fedoseeva - Shukshina), with whom he corresponded during his imprisonment. In the company of a new acquaintance, who surrounded Yegor with care and love, it begins to seem to him that everything is gradually getting better. However, former law-abiding friends do not allow the man to forget about the past and ruin his life.
Initially, Vasily Shukshin planned to make a film about the Don Cossack Stepan Razin. With this idea, he came to the Mosfilm film studio, but they refused him there, as in the M. Gorky studio, and insisted that he make a film about Soviet realities.
“He dreamed of playing Stepan Razin, and the script “I came to give you freedom” had already been written, but the role that he dreamed of and on which he spent time and energy did not happen,” said actress Natalya Gvozdikova in the Central Television program, dedicated to the film “Kalina Krasnaya”.
© Still from the film “Kalina Krasnaya” (1973)
Documentary footage and non-professional actors
Due to the inability to make a film about Razin, Vasily Shukshin was very worried, which ultimately became the cause of an exacerbation of the ulcer. The director ended up in the hospital, where he wrote a story about the criminal Yegor.
The inspiration for this story was the experience of one of the filmmaker’s relatives, who corresponded with a prisoner who intended to come to her after his release. According to Dom Kino, Shukshin even named the heroine after her - Any.
The name “Kalina Krasnaya” was invented by Lydia Fedoseeva - Shukshina after reading the story. It was this song that the artist sang when she first met her future husband. However, the composition itself does not sound in the drama, since the budget of the film did not allow acquiring the rights to it. But in the tape you can hear the song “Evening Bells”.
Before filming, Shukshin studied documentary prison films from the chronicles of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. During the trial, he came across a monochrome recording in which one of the criminals sings the romance “Letter to a Mother” (a poem by Sergei Yesenin). What he saw touched the soul of the director, and he decided to include this moment in the film in the form of a memory of the main character.
According to the director, his story is about a man who suddenly found himself.
“There is a concept of “difficult fate”, in this case - a frankly difficult fate, broken, crumpled, that is, you probably couldn’t imagine anything more difficult. What to do in this case? And here, probably, as in medicine, where the time never comes to say that it is impossible and not necessary to continue to fight for a person. You have to fight for a person to the end,” explained Vasily Shukshin in an interview with Gosteleradio in 1974. — I based the film mainly on two characters - he and she, late love. It seemed to me that Yegor Prokudin, an established repeat offender-thief, met a woman and suddenly saw in her a distant, forgotten self.”
An important character in the project is Lyuba herself, who gave Yegor hope for a different life. According to Lydia Fedoseeva-Shukshina, throughout the entire film she sought to show an understanding woman with a kind, generous soul.
“In ordinary performance, to play a role is to study the role. Study the character and life of these people. This passed me by, because I was prepared in advance for the fact that I had to fall in love with a person with a difficult fate,” Shukshin’s wife recalled in an interview with Gosteleradio.
The film can be called a folk film, because almost all the episodic roles in it were performed by local residents. The director looked for them on the street - near the canteen, on the pier, near the market.
One of these non-professional artists who took part in the filming was Nikolai Zabolotsky. He and a friend asked to be extras in the role of two village alcoholics. Shukshin immediately agreed, as he was looking for such heroes. As Zabolotsky said, filming did not cause them any stress.
“We didn’t pay attention to the camera at all, and so there were four takes a day. Shukshin, by the way, said that we did it so naturally, as if we were real artists,” Zabolotsky recalled in the Vesti.ru program dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the director’s birth.
By the way, residents of the Belozersky district participated not only in the crowd. For one of the main roles, Shukshin also attracted a woman living in Sadovoy. Afimya Bystrova played Yegor's mother. This happened after actress Vera Maretskaya was unable to star in the film due to illness.
The elderly woman on camera answered Lidia Fedoseeva-Shukshina’s questions, which were thought out in advance and appropriate for the plot, thereby talking about herself. They filmed this moment so that the woman did not see the camera and had a natural conversation. For her work, the resident received a fee of 700 rubles, which by Soviet standards was an impressive amount. In addition, Bystrova was given gold earrings, shoes and a wool dress for her work.
Lyuba Baikalova’s father was played by actor Ivan Ryzhov, also known for such projects as “White Bim Black Ear” and “Crew”. Shukshin immediately noticed him for the role, as he was sure that the artist, who grew up in the village, could easily cope with the image assigned to him.
The role of Prokudin's main enemy and executioner was played by Georgy Burkov. The actor did not immediately agree to filming because he did not want to play such a negative character.
“He didn’t imagine himself in such a role at all, so he didn’t agree,” recalled actress Tatyana Ukharova in a Central Television program dedicated to the film “Kalina Krasnaya.”
Shukshin, in turn, convinced him to discard superstitions and accept the offer, since the artist was ideal for the role. The director was confident in him - they had previously worked together in the film “Stoves and Benches” and became friends in the process. As a result, Burkov agreed.
In addition, the film stars Maria Skvortsova (Luba's Mother), Maria Vinogradova (Zoya), Alexey Vanin (Peter), Tatyana Gavrilova (Lucien), Natalya Gvozdikova (Telephonist), Nikolai Grabbe (Head of the Colony) and many others.
© Still from the film “Kalina Krasnaya” (1973)
Heavy editing, escape from the hospital and censorship
Vasily Shukshin invested a lot of energy and health into the production of Kalina Krasny. The filming itself was not easy for the filmmaker, as there were several life-threatening moments for the director.
For example, one day the warden of the colony where the filming took place shot at Shukshin. This happened unintentionally: the director, along with a local boy Kolya and artist Lvov Durov, were walking along the embankment, and the child suddenly ran towards the boat with the prisoners. The director tried to stop Kolya, and that’s when a shot rang out. Shukshin was saved by Durov, pushing him to the side.
In another case, a Soviet director was almost hit by a truck driven by actor Alexei Vanin, who played Lyuba’s brother.
Despite all the troubles, the film was shot without injury. But Vasily Shukshin’s health still suffered.
Already after the end of filming, at the editing stage, the Soviet director's ulcer worsened again and he was hospitalized. Nevertheless, he did not lie in a hospital bed for a long time - at this time comments came from Goskino, and the filmmaker left the hospital to make corrections to the film.
For two weeks, Shukshin came to the studio every day to finalize the film according to all the requirements presented, and right during the work process he suffered from attacks.
Many moments were removed from the picture that allegedly discredited Soviet reality. For example, at the very beginning of the tape, Prokudin said the following phrase: “It’s good that he sat down in the spring. We should always plant in the spring.” It was ordered to be cut out, like all references to dispossession, small pensions, and hunger.
The first to see the drama, as the director promised, were the residents of the Belozersky district. The premiere took place at the Baltika cinema.
“Kalina Krasnaya” was a great success: more than 62 million people watched the film in the USSR. The film was shown at the Berlin Film Festival and won three awards. In addition, the project took the main award at the All-Union Film Festival in Baku and became the best film in a poll by the magazine “Soviet Screen” in 1975.
However, Vasily Shukshin himself was unable to fully appreciate the scale of the fame and honor of his work: on April 2, 1974, at the age of 45, the director died of a heart attack.
As Komsomolskaya Pravda reports, the deceased classic was discovered by artist Georgy Burkov, who played the role of the accomplice at whose hands Yegor Prokudin was killed.
Restoration and re-display in cinemas
In 2014, Mosfilm carried out the restoration of Kalina Krasny. First, the experts worked on the video sequence, and then cleared the old recording of sound defects. At the end of the entire work, the material was transferred to digital media. The whole process lasted about four months.
In 2019, the already restored version of the film was re-released in the country. The first viewers of the new version of the film were residents of St. Petersburg. As an employee of the Aurora cinema then told Rossiyskaya Gazeta, tickets were readily bought up not only by representatives of the older generation, but also by young people.
Young people actively attended sessions of “Red Kalina” in other regions of Russia. The film was watched in cities such as Yekaterinburg, Rostov-on-Don, Novosibirsk, Moscow, Chelyabinsk and others.
They decided to release the restored version after the film was selected for a special competition program of world cinema classics at the Venice Film Festival in 2019.