Alexander Rowe is a Soviet film director who has presented cinema with many magnificent fairy tales. Among them is the painting “Fire, Water and Copper Pipes”, the actors of which managed to create a magical, unique atmosphere in the frame. How was the movie masterpiece filmed? And which of the famous artists received roles in the project?
Film crew
The film crew of the film “Fire, Water and Copper Pipes” is, first of all, Alexander Rowe and his faithful comrades Mikhail Volpin and Nikolai Erdman.
At the time when the filming of the new fairy tale started (which was
1967), Rowe had already released the movie “Morozko” with his friends. Not wanting to turn to other scriptwriters, the director again invited Erdman and Volpin to work in his film, entrusting the storyline and dialogs of the heroes to professionals.
Dmitry Surensky stood behind the camera. With this cameraman, Alexander Rowe shot his best on-screen works: Barbarian Beauty, a Long Braid, Morozko, Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, etc.
The music for the film was written by Nikolai Budashkin, who also voiced The Captains of the Blue Lagoon and the cartoon The Scarlet Flower.
Short story
What events have the plot of the fairy tale “Fire, water and copper pipes” built around? Actors Alexei Katyshev and Natalya Sedykh play a young man and a girl who accidentally met at the edge of a forest. Alyonushka immediately liked Vasya. But the insidious Kashchei the Immortal also looked at the sweet girl and kidnapped her.
Gaining courage, Vasily goes in search of his beloved. To get to the lair of Kashchei, the guy has to go through fire and water. But the most difficult test awaits him ahead: Vasily will have to choose what is more valuable to him - the salvation of Alyonushka or glory and wealth?
"Fire, water and copper pipes": actors. Natalya Sedykh as Alyonushka
Natalia Sedykh, the performer of the role of Alyonushka, was born on July 10, 1948. According to the zodiac sign, the artist is Cancer.
From 4 years old Natalia was engaged in figure skating on ice. The girl quickly became famous, and at 15 she was already shown on central television. Just then, in the 60s, Alexander Rowe was looking for some graceful beauty for the role of Alyonushka in his famous fairy tale “Frost”. Ordinary theater actresses did not suit the director, but he drew attention to the graceful ballerina. So Natalya Sedykh became an actress even earlier than the famous ballerina.
In the film “Fire, Water and Copper Pipes,” actors Alexei Katyshev and Natalya Sedykh quickly found a common language: they were the only ones from the entire cast who did not have an acting education. Nevertheless, Rowe approved them for lava roles, since he considered the texture of the artists to be suitable.
Alexander Rowe literally “discovered” the name of Natalia Sedykh. Soon she became a ballerina of the Bolshoi Theater and performed on the same stage with Maya Plisetskaya and Maris Liepa. But in the cinema, the dancer did not find a place. After collaborating with Rowe, the artist played only a couple of roles - in the drama Blue Ice, in the musical film Love for Three Oranges and in the comedy The Chest of Drawers Went Through the Streets. Then Sedykh disappeared from the screens forever and concentrated on a theatrical career.
Alexey Katyshev as Vasya
The actors of the film “Fire, Water, and Copper Pipes” were respected people in Soviet cinema. But Alexei Katyshev, the performer of the role of Vasya, was not only unknown to the public, but also had no relation to the acting profession.
Alexey worked at the Yalta film studio as an assistant to a sound engineer. Alexander Row conquered the blue eyes of a young man and his blond curls. That is how the director of a good fellow imagined himself. Rowe shot the aspiring actor in the fairy tale Fire, Water, and Copper Pipes, and a year later he invited Alexei to the film Barbara Beauty, a Long Braid.
After a successful film debut, Alexei had to leave to serve in the army, and when he returned, Rowe was no longer alive. Nobody wanted to shoot Katyshev. He appeared in two films: “Spring Tale” and “About Vitya, about Masha and the Marine Corps,” and then got a job as a milk tanker driver and worked in this position until the 90s.
The artist ended his days in poverty: his relatives survived from his apartment, so Alex lived with his colleague. He died in 2006 after being beaten in the street.
“Fire, Water and Copper Pipes” (fairy tale): supporting actors
Although the main characters of the film are Alyonushka and Vasya, the “decorations” of the tale lie precisely in the episodes. The frame of the main characters is surrounded by colorful characters played by great masters of cinema and theater.
The brightest star of the screen action is George Millar. It seemed that this actor would even play a stone, if necessary. Millar Rowe immediately assigned three roles - Kashchei, Baba Yaga and a comedic fireman.
Vera Altai, well known for the fairy tale “Frost”, this time played the wife of Kashchei and the daughter of Baba Yaga.
Lev Potemkin (Tsap-Tsarap from the fairy tale “The Little Humpbacked Horse”), Alexander Khvylya (Sage the Silencer from “Mary the Artisan”) and Anatoly Kubatsky (Yagupop from “The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors”) acted as Kashchei’s devoted servants.
The artist Leonid Kharitonov - the star of films about the soldier Ivan Brovkin - in the tale of Alexander Rowe appeared in the role of Tsar Fedul VI. This was the only collaboration between Kharitonov and Rowe.
The Muse of Krepkogorskaya, who played Masha’s mother in the drama “Officers”, this time appeared in the image of Princess Sofyushka.
Interesting Facts
- The film “Fire, Water and Copper Pipes” (1967), whose actors are known throughout the Soviet Union, occupies 578 position in the list of leaders of the Soviet film distribution (for all the years the state has existed). Almost 26 million people watched the tale. The first position in this rating is occupied by the Mexican melodrama Esenia, which was watched by 92 million Soviet viewers in the cinema.
- For decades, Alexander Rowe has consistently worked with the same team, and this applies to everyone: from administrators and illuminators to actors and scriptwriters.
- George Millar played in absolutely all the tales of the director. Sometimes in one film the actor got 3-4 characters.
- Alexander Rowe is Irish by nationality. His father in 1905 worked under a contract in the Russian Empire, and in 1914 he fled abroad, not expressing a desire to take his family with him.