As filmed "Moscow does not believe in tears." The story of the film, director, actors and roles

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

The story of a double-lied woman

The original script, which formed the basis of the picture, was written by Valentin Chernykh for the competition for the best film about Moscow. The everyday story of a provincial girl who came to work in the capital was called "Twice a Lie." Because her story began with the fact that at first she posed as a native, wealthy Muscovite in front of a young boyfriend, and then, when she was already working as a director of a textile factory, she hid it from another man.

The future director “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears” by Vladimir Menshov was not impressed by the script. Largely due to the negative feedback of the recognized master Jan Fried, an outstanding Soviet screenwriter and director, among whose works are Twelfth Night, A Dog in the Hay, 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.

Script work

Director Vladimir Menshov

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

As a result, the script increased from 60 to 90 pages, new heroes and storylines appeared. For example, the story of the downing hockey player Gurin and the scene in the dating club in the movie “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears” in 1979 did not have a script in the first version. Also appeared aspiring actor Innokenty Smoktunovsky. For this, Menshov wrote an episode with a visit to the festival of French films, where the heroines of the picture looked with enthusiasm at the Soviet movie stars. Whereas at Chernykh they were at the Argentinean embassy and just watched the guests gather for a diplomatic reception.

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

main character

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

Ekaterina Tikhomirova - Director of the plant and deputy of the Moscow City Council

Her husband, director Vladimir Menshov, did not consider Vera Alentova in “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears”. Since, in his opinion, she did not fit, she was also seven years older than her main partner Irina Muravyova. However, on samples, the actress looked more convincing than most others and looked very organically in scenes with Gosha, the beloved man of the main character. Menshov, telling how they shot “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears,” always emphasizes that it was very difficult to work with my wife. They constantly talked about filming, arguing and bickering. It was very crushing that many believed that the role of Alentov received as the director’s wife.

Other female roles

For Irina Muravyova, “Moscow does not believe in tears” became one of her iconic works, thanks to which the talent of the actress was brightly revealed. She plays Lyudmila, one of three friends who came to work in the Soviet capital at the limit. Very proactive and active, seeking to gain a foothold in Moscow at any cost. The director invited the actress after he accidentally saw her in one of the television plays.

Muravyova later admitted that she had simply burst into tears when she first saw the picture on the pasteboard. 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 screenwriter’s acquaintance — a housekeeper who passed off the landlord as her uncle and also met with the athlete.

Many famous Soviet actresses, including Galina Polsky, Natalya Andreichenko, Lyudmila Zaitseva and Nina Ruslanova, auditioned for the role of the third friend, a modest girl-painter. However, according to the creators of the film, Raisa Ryazanov looked best at the samples, which was later approved by the artistic council. The director of the film met her on a trip to Siberia, where they performed before film screenings. The creators of the picture in articles about the film “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears” 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

Gosh worker intellectual

Many leading actors auditioned for the main male role, according to Menshov in an interview about how "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" was shot. 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 once he saw Batalov in the film "My Dear Man", which was on television. And immediately I realized who should be invited to the role of a working intellectual. However, he did not agree for a long time, because he was keen on teaching activities at VGIK and for a long time did not receive big roles. In addition, Alexei Batalov in “Moscow does not believe in tears” did not like too much melodramaticity, and the role of a locksmith did not cause enthusiasm.

The director specifically made some scenes with Batalov more domestic. Gosha was supposed to watch a hockey game according to the script, sipping cold beer, and instead he began to repair the vacuum cleaner. And where they had to sing the song “A young Cossack walks along the Don” along with Kolya, he just silently cuts the 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 Air France from their conversation about the hijacking of an airplane by terrorists.

Other male roles

Meeting with a novice actor

Actor Alexander Fatyushkin was first tried on the role of Nikolai, Tosi's husband. But they decided to give it to Boris Smorchkov, who always worked well for ordinary Russian working guys. After this, Fatyushkin was offered the role of the drunk hockey player Gurin. The actor later said, talking about how they shot "Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears", that he really liked his character, and strongly regretted that many of the shots were not included in the final version of the picture. For example, an episode in which a hockey player becomes the hero of a match with the Swedish team in the crowded Luzhniki Sports Palace.

But most of all he regretted the scene that Goskino removed from the picture. Closer to the finale, all key characters come to the cottage, three friends are sitting in the mound and singing. At this time, Gurin approaches them with a drinking companion and begins to bicker with his ex-wife Lyudmila, asking for a three for a drink. Khanyga shouts to the woman that he grew up at her husband’s matches as a person and is indignant at how she talks to him. The leadership of the Soviet cinema then considered that the player of the national team, even the former one, could not go down like that, since he promised to tie it up, which means that it is.

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

Moscow 50s

Two friends

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 took place, and the shooting took place closer to the end of the 1970s. The location of the film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" should have been associated with the post-war years among Soviet viewers. 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, who is in such a house. Her cheerful and nimble friend got in touch with her in order to at least live a life that she could only dream of. The girls enter entrance number 1 on Vosstaniya Square (now Kudrinskaya Square), but later in the film they show the lobby of another Stalinist skyscraper, which is located on 1/15 Kotelnicheskaya Embankment.

Another symbol of the post-war era in the place where they shot "Moscow does not believe in tears" was the Moscow metro. Lyudmila meets the national team hockey player Sergei Gurin, her future husband, at the Novoslobodskaya station, which was disguised as the Okhotny Ryad station. So called before the renaming in 1958, the station "Prospekt Marx."

Other iconic places

The film begins with one of the most beautiful and popular Moscow panoramic views from the Sparrow Hills. In the frames, there is a metro bridge passing through the Moskva River, and in the distance the Shabolovskaya TV tower, and the building of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which the people call "golden brains" back then.

Library named after Lenin

Many streets and buildings where "Moscow does not believe in tears" were filmed are easily recognizable by many viewers. Including the famous 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 as they read, the heroine Muravyova answered that there was also a smoking room. She also owns another famous phrase - she notices Smoktunovsky: “You start too late” when he introduced himself as an aspiring actor. In life, he really began quite late to act in films. All dialogue takes place in the Theater of Film Actor on the street. Vorovsky (now Povarskaya), where friends came to the French Film Festival.

Production scenes in the film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" 1979 were filmed in the shops 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.

Places related to the main characters

Opposite the house number 1, on the famous bench on Gogolevsky Boulevard, the main character in the film appears in two episodes when she meets her father’s father, cameraman Rudolph (Yuri Vasiliev). The first time a pregnant girl asks for a doctor to have an abortion. Since the young man refused to marry her, learning that she was a worker at the factory, and not the daughter of Professor Tikhomirov. Fortunately, according to the scenario, the daughter of Alexander (Natalya Vavilova) was still born. The second time they sit on this bench, when Catherine, already a mature and successful woman, is the director of the plant, and Rudolph, whose career did not work out, asks her to let her daughter talk to her.

Catherine wakes up already in the 1970s in her apartment in one of the elite houses on Mosfilmovskaya Street, built in 1972 for dignitaries. The communal apartment where Gosha lived was in Lyalyniy Lane, in one of the old houses. At this time, there was a major overhaul with resettlement. And the fight between Gosha and the offenders of Alexandra in the gateway, which runs alongside the script, was actually filmed on 7 Leningradskoye Shosse.

The fate of the film

Moving to Stalin's house

The painting council of Mosfilm took the picture, the majority of whose members considered it a cheap melodrama, playing on the most base feelings of moviegoers. Only the director of the film studio Sizov, as Menshov told about the story of the film "Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears," greatly angered by such estimates, unexpectedly supported the film, saying that he would receive many prizes and would enjoy popular love. But in a private conversation with the director, he asked to cut too frank scenes. Menshov rested and did not cut. True, by this time the scene of Katya’s meeting with his married lover Vladimir (Oleg Tabakov) in his apartment had already been greatly reduced. The fate of the picture was decided by the fact that Brezhnev liked it very much, who was simply delighted.

The huge box office success of the film came as a complete surprise to cinematic officials and critics. Moreover, there was an excellent financial result in the USA, the Americans bought the painting and then they put it forward for an Oscar. Vladimir Menshov learned about receiving a prestigious award from television news. Only eight years later, at the "Nika" award ceremony, he was awarded a figurine, which was stored in Goskino. They only wanted to let Oscar be held and then take it back, but Menshov did not return it.


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