How "Moscow does not believe in tears" was filmed. The history of the film, director, actors and roles

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The premiere of one of the few Soviet films that received the prestigious film award "Oscar" took place at the end of 1979. The plot of the film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears", a lyrical story about how three provincial girls came to conquer a big city, turned out to be close to many moviegoers. The picture was bought by companies in a hundred countries of the world, and in the Soviet Union alone, about 90 million people watched it in a year.

The story of a woman who lied twice

The original script that formed the basis of the picture was written by Valentin Chernykh for the competition for the best film about Moscow. A household story about a provincial girl who came to work in the capital was called "Twice Lied". Because her story began with the fact that at first she pretended to be a native, we althy Muscovite in front of a young boyfriend, and then, when she was already workingdirector of a textile factory, hid it from another man.

The future director of "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" Vladimir Menshov was not impressed by the script. Largely due to the negative feedback from the recognized master Jan Frid, an outstanding Soviet screenwriter and director, among whose works are Twelfth Night, Dog in the Manger, Don Cesar de Bazan. But on the other hand, Menshov was close to the idea of conquering the capital, overcoming the difficulties of adapting to life in a big city, since he himself went the same way.

Working on the script

The director offered Valentin Chernykh to significantly rework the script, but he categorically refused. Then Vladimir Menshov himself took up the job. As he says, he was very attracted to the scene where the main character starts the alarm clock and falls asleep in tears, and in the next frame she wakes up twenty years later and wakes up her adult daughter. At first, I even thought that I missed a few pages. But then I realized that this is such a story with a jump in time and the idea worked.

As a result, the script increased from 60 to 90 pages, new characters and storylines appeared. For example, the story of the degraded hockey player Gurin and the scene in the dating club in the 1979 film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" were not in the first version of the script. Aspiring actor Innokenty Smoktunovsky also appeared. For this, Menshov wrote an episode with a visit to a French film festival, where the heroines of the film looked with delight at Soviet movie stars. Whereas the Blacks have themwere at the Argentine embassy and just watched the guests arrive for a diplomatic reception.

In the original version, the director of the factory and city deputy Ekaterina Tikhomirova was supposed to receive voters, but the director found it boring. And the boss in the film went to the dating club, where the headmistress, played by Leah Akhedzhakova, wooed her for a responsible employee of the central office.

Main character

Irina Kupchenko, Zhanna Bolotova and Anastasia Vertinskaya were invited to the main role of Katya Tikhomirova. However, all of them, after reading the script, refused. Production melodrama did not interest them. Margarita Terekhova chose to star in The Three Musketeers. Natalya Saiko passed the first auditions, but then it turned out that she did not look good in the frame with Gosha (Aleksey Batalov).

Vera Alentova in "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" was not considered by her husband, director Vladimir Menshov. Since, in his opinion, she was not suitable, in addition, she was seven years older than her main partner, Irina Muravyova. However, during the auditions, the actress looked more convincing than most of the others and looked very organic in the scenes with Gosha, the beloved man of the main character. Menshov, telling how they filmed "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears", always emphasizes that it was very difficult to work with his wife. They constantly talked about filming, argued and scandalized. It was very pressing that many believed that Alentov received the role as the director's wife.

Other female roles

For Irina Muravyova "Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears" has become one of her iconic works, thanks to which the talent of the actress was clearly revealed. She plays Lyudmila, one of three friends who came to the Soviet capital on a work quota. Very enterprising and active, striving to gain a foothold in Moscow at any cost. The director invited the actress after he accidentally saw her in one of the television performances.

Muravieva later admitted that she simply burst into tears when she first saw the picture on the editing table. She did not like Lyudmila at all - rude, ill-mannered, and sometimes just vulgar. For her, this personified everything that she did not like in life and in people. In general, her heroine had a real prototype, a friend of the screenwriter - a housekeeper who passed off the owner of the apartment as her uncle and also met with the athlete.

Many famous Soviet actresses auditioned for the role of the third friend, a modest house painter, including Galina Polskikh, Natalya Andreichenko, Lyudmila Zaitseva and Nina Ruslanova. However, according to the creators of the film, Raisa Ryazanova looked the best at the auditions, who was later approved by the artistic council. The director of the film met her on a trip to Siberia, where they performed before screenings. The creators of the picture in articles about how Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears was filmed wrote that some actresses were offended by them, not understanding how they could be offered such modest roles, others because they were not approved.

Intelligent worker

For the main male role, according to Menshov inan interview about how Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears was filmed, many famous actors auditioned. He did not approve such stars of Soviet cinema as Vitaly Solomin, Oleg Efremov, Vyacheslav Tikhonov. The director even thought about playing the role of Gosha himself, but one day he saw Batalov in the film "My Dear Man", which was on television. And I immediately understood who should be invited to the role of a worker-intellectual. However, he did not agree for a long time, because he was passionate about teaching at VGIK and had not received big roles for a long time. In addition, Alexei Batalov did not like the excessive melodrama in "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears", and the role of a locksmith did not cause delight.

Some scenes with Batalov the director specially made more everyday. According to the script, Gosha was supposed to watch a hockey match while sipping cold beer, but instead he undertook to repair the vacuum cleaner. And where they were supposed to sing the song “A young Cossack walks along the Don” with Kolya, he simply silently butchers a dried ram. Some dialogues and scenes had to be changed and at the insistence of the artistic council, for example, they removed the name of the Air France airline from their conversation about the hijacking of the plane by terrorists.

Other male roles

Actor Alexander Fatyushkin was first tried for the role of Nikolai, Tosya's husband. But they decided to give it to Boris Smorchkov, who always did well with simple Russian working guys. After that, Fatyushkin was offered the role of the drunken hockey player Gurin. The actor later saidtalking about how they filmed "Moscow does not believe in tears", that he really liked his character, and greatly regretted that many of the shots were not included in the final version of the picture. For example, the episode in which the hockey player becomes the hero of the match against the Swedish national team in the overcrowded Luzhniki Sports Palace.

But most of all I regretted the scene that was removed from the picture of the State Film Agency. Closer to the finale, all the key characters come to the dacha, three friends sit on the mound and sing. At this time, Gurin comes up to them along with a drinking companion and begins to bicker with his ex-wife Lyudmila, asking for a triplet for a drink. Khanyga yells at the woman that he grew up at her husband's matches as a person and is outraged by the way she talks to him. The leadership of the Soviet cinema then considered that a player of the national team, even a former one, could not go down like that, since he promised to quit, then that's the way it is.

Among the names of the actors of "Moscow does not believe in tears" there is also Basov, who received a small but important role as deputy head of the head office Anton. It was very important for the director that it was his character who said the later famous phrase: "At 40, life is just beginning." Menshov came up with the rest during the filming, for example, stomach problems. A person does not get out of the toilet, but everything is trying to get to know the girls better. And it becomes clear to the viewer what kind of character it is.

Moscow 50s

The creators of the picture faced a difficult task: it was necessary to show Moscow in the 1950s, when the events of the first episodes take place, and shootingtook place towards the end of the 1970s. The filming locations of the film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" were supposed to be associated with Soviet viewers with the post-war years. Therefore, Stalin's skyscrapers, which are iconic buildings of that period, fall into the frames of the picture several times.

Young Katya temporarily moves to the apartment of her relative, Professor Tikhomirov, located in such a house. Her cheerful and nimble friend tagged along with her in order to at least live a little life, which she can only dream of. The girls enter entrance number 1 on Vosstaniya Square (now Kudrinskaya Square), but further in the film they show the foyer of another Stalinist skyscraper, which is located on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment, 1/15.

Another symbol of the post-war era in the place where they filmed "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" was the Moscow metro. Lyudmila meets the hockey player of the national team Sergei Gurin, her future husband, at the Novoslobodskaya station, which was disguised as the Okhotny Ryad station. This was the name of the Prospekt Marksa station until it was renamed in 1958.

Other iconic places

The film begins with one of the most beautiful and popular panoramas of Moscow - the view from Sparrow Hills. The footage shows the metro bridge passing through the Moscow River, and in the distance the Shabolovskaya TV Tower, and the building of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which was still under construction at that time, which the "people" call "golden brains".

Many streets and buildings where "Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears" were filmed are easily recognizable by many viewers. Includingfamous interiors of the Library. Lenin on Vozdvizhenka, 3/5, where Lyudmila tried to get acquainted with an accomplished scientist. And when her friend asked if she was going to watch how they read, the heroine Muravyova replied that there was also a smoking room there. She also owns another famous phrase - she remarks to Smoktunovsky: "You start too late," when he introduced himself as an aspiring actor. In life, he really started acting quite late in films. The entire dialogue takes place in the Film Actor Theater on the street. Vorovsky (now Povarskaya), where friends came to the French film festival.

Production scenes in the 1979 film "Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears" were filmed in the workshops of a chemical fiber plant in Klin. Production did not stop during filming. The premiere of the picture took place in the factory club of the same city near Moscow.

Locations related to the main characters

Opposite house number 1, on the famous bench on Gogolevsky Boulevard, the main character in the film appears in two episodes when she meets her child's father, cameraman Rudolf (Yuri Vasiliev). The first time a pregnant girl asks to find a doctor for her to have an abortion. Since the young man refused to marry her, having learned that she was a factory worker, and not the daughter of Professor Tikhomirov. Fortunately, according to the script, Alexander's daughter (Natalya Vavilova) was still born. The second time they sit on this bench is when Ekaterina, already a mature and successful woman, director of the plant, and Rudolf, whose career has not worked out, asks her to lettalk to my daughter.

Ekaterina wakes up already in the 1970s in her apartment in one of the elite houses on Mosfilmovskaya Street, built in 1972 for high-ranking officials. The communal apartment where Gosha lived was in Lyalin Lane, in one of the old houses. At that time, there was a major overhaul with resettlement. And Gosha's fight with Alexandra's offenders in the gateway, which, according to the script, takes place nearby, was actually filmed on Leningradskoye Highway, 7.

Fate of the film

The artistic council of Mosfilm accepted the picture, most of whose members considered it a cheap melodrama, playing on the basest feelings of moviegoers. Only the director of the film studio Sizov, as Menshov told about the history of the creation of the film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears", very angry with such assessments, unexpectedly supported the film, saying that he would receive many prizes and would enjoy people's love. But in a private conversation with the director, he asked to cut too explicit scenes. Menshov rested and did not reduce. True, by this time the scene of Katya's meeting with her married lover Vladimir (Oleg Tabakov) in his apartment had already been greatly curtailed. The fate of the picture was decided by the fact that Brezhnev really liked it, who was simply delighted.

The film's huge box office success came as a complete surprise to film officials and critics. Moreover, there was an excellent financial result in the United States, the Americans bought the picture and then nominated it for the Oscar themselves. Vladimir Menshov learned about receiving the prestigious awardfrom TV news. Only eight years later, at the Nika award ceremony, he was presented with a statuette, which was kept in Goskino. They only wanted to let him hold the Oscar and then take it back, but Menchov did not return it.