The film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears": reviews, summary, creation history, film crew, actors and roles

In February of this year, thirty-nine years have passed since the release of one of the outstanding masterpieces of Soviet-era cinema, the film “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears,” which is a very sincerely told lyrical story about three girls who once risked to come to Moscow from the province in search of happy lottery ticket.

This picture deservedly earned itself a real triumph, the solemn procession of which spread to a hundred countries of the world and culminated in an Academy Award Oscar. However, the triumph of this wonderful film directed by Vladimir Menshov, at least in Russia and the former Soviet Union, continues, and not a single festive television broadcast is still without it.

However, not everything and did not always go smoothly in the process of creating this work of Soviet cinematic art.

A few words about the creators of the picture

Who were these people who generously presented millions of viewers with such a magnificent gift? The film "Moscow does not believe in tears" the film crew was the next creative team.

The script of the picture was written by the famous screenwriter and playwright Valentin Chernykh, familiar to viewers on such hits as "Earthly Love", "Taste of Bread", "Marry the Captain", "I declare war on you", "Love in Russian", " Children of Arbat "and" Own ".

The director, after some hesitation, was Vladimir Menshov, known both for the many roles played in the movie, and for his directorial works such as Love and Pigeons, Shirley-Myrli and Envy of the Gods.

The honored artist of the RSFSR Igor Slabnevich, who worked on the creation of such Soviet films as "Liberation" and "Stalingrad", became the director of photography, and Said Menyashchikov became an artist.

Editing the picture was done by Elena Mikhailova, and songs by poems by Dmitry Sukharev, Yuri Vizbor and Yuri Levitansky were written by Soviet author and performer Sergei Nikitin.

But the most important participants in the creation of the film “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears” was a whole army of actors, the number of which exceeded sixty people.

Summary

Today it seems surprising, but in the distant 80s, when a picture was shot, the plot of which has been known by heart for several generations of our compatriots, who have watched this tape dozens of times and still continue to laugh and cry with her characters, many famous and not very Soviet actors simply refused to participate in the filming of the film directed by Vladimir Menshov.

Recall what the content of the picture was.

Acquaintance with its main characters takes place at the end of the 50s. From a distant province, three girlfriends come to Moscow - Katya, Luda and Tonya. Each of them has its own character and concept of the structure of its own life, and they also represent happiness in their own way.

Quiet and sincere Tonya works at a construction site and considers taking care of her husband and children as the main female destination. Having become the wife of her colleague, the simple and correct Nikolai, she is happy with her small and ordinary family joys.

Imperious Luda, and more often Ludmila, as she herself prefers to introduce herself to young people, is intensely looking for a groom among difficult men who have achieved something. She is married to the rising star of hockey Sergey Gurin. But in the end, Sergey gets drunk, and Lyudmila divorced with him endlessly continues to search for her happiness.

The simple and understandable life of the moral, but gullible Katya one day is destroyed by pregnancy from a connection with the imposing Rudolph, who works on television, who was with the girl mainly because of the legend invented by Luda about her father-professor and a chic apartment in a skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment. Accusing Katya of deceit, he runs away from her and from his unborn child like from fire. Having given birth to a daughter, Alexandra, the heroine is torn between work and a child whom she is raising alone. Going to bed deep after midnight, she moves the alarm clock to an even earlier time of rise and cries ...

An alarm clock rings, and the film is carried forward twenty years. Katya wakes up already by the director of the chemical plant Ekaterina Alexandrovna. From this moment, the summary of “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears” fundamentally changes. Having achieved success in her life and career, she is still lonely and not loved by anyone. But fate had already prepared for her a meeting with the mechanic Gosha ...

History of creation

The film "Moscow does not believe in tears," the creation story is rather unexpected.

It all started with a script by Valentin Chernykh, which Vladimir Menshov, from the suggestion of an outstanding screenwriter and director Ian Frid, found it uninteresting.

The only thing that Menshov really liked was the episode with the same alarm clock, transferring the main character twenty years ahead. Grasping this idea, the director asked the scriptwriter to make significant changes to the material. When Chernykh flatly refused, Menshov himself took up the adjustment of the script. As a result, the text almost doubled, and the audience saw the picture as it had a chance not to become. However, Menshov managed to correct the original scenario so that, according to reviews, “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears,” for nearly forty years, has been holding the palm among the most beloved domestic films.

For example, becoming the director of the plant, Catherine, according to the original version, was going to meet with voters, but as a result, by the will of the director, she was sent to communicate with the director of the dating club.

Rudolph was supposed to have a father, who worked at the factory as a turner, and Katya, invited by Rudolph to television, was supposed to be present on the TV shows "KVN", and not "Blue Light".

Below in the photo in a black hat you can see director Vladimir Menshov, who also played a tiny role in the picture.

Gosha, scrupulously repairing a vacuum cleaner, originally watched hockey on TV and drank beer. And from Nikolai’s well-known answer to Gosha’s famous question about the lack of stability and the seizure of an airplane by terrorists - “What is being done in the world? - for political correctness, Menshov removed the name of the airport. In the same scene, instead of starting to sing “Walking along the Don”, pretty drunk Gosha and Nikolai started loudly cutting ram, and this episode became one of the funniest in the film “Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears,” according to the audience.

Gosha and Catherine

Let us dwell in more detail on the main characters of our favorite film.

According to the authoritative recommendation of the management of the Mosfilm film studio, only such stars of the Soviet cinema as Anastasia Vertinskaya, Zhanna Bolotova, Irina Kupchenko and even Valentina Telichkina should have applied for the role of Ekaterina. However, none of these celebrities was completely interested in the script of the new film directed by Menshov.

The famous actress Margarita Terekhova already wanted to give consent to the shooting, but at the same time she was offered a role in the serial film "D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers", and the actress preferred Milady Catherine.

In the end, the role went to the wife of Menshov, Vera Alentova. Concerned that many would have thought that his wife had gotten into a movie by pulling, Menshov constantly broke down on her, turning into a scream, considering her a bad actress and getting the most out of her. So, after going through severe trials, Vera Alentova became the very Katya whom we all loved.

With Gosha, everything turned out to be very difficult too. Such famous actors as Vitaly Solomin, Vyacheslav Tikhonov and Oleg Efremov could fulfill his role. But all of them did not fit the image that Vladimir Menshov imagined, who, out of desperation, was about to take on the role of Gosha. But at this wonderful moment, he saw on the TV screen the famous actor Alexei Batalov and immediately realized that in front of him was Gosh himself.

Surprisingly, Batalov himself did not like the scenario presented, since he did not at all represent himself in the form of an intelligent locksmith.

After going through all the thorns described, it was Vera Alentova and Alexey Batalov who were destined to become one of the most beloved by the audience romantic couples of Soviet cinema.

Sergey and Lyudmila

Few people know, but actor Alexander Fatyushin, who played the role of hockey player Sergei Gurin, could well have become Nikolai. Indeed, it is not at all difficult to imagine him as the right husband of the heroine Tony, since both of these heroes are somewhat similar in character. Or maybe they even represent a kind of metaphorical message of the director, indicating that for the most part all men are the same, and only what woman will go with him in life is important. A simple builder Nikolai was lucky to meet his woman. But the famous hockey player - no ...

One way or another, but Alexander Fatyushin in the film “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears” eventually played a rather tragic role for Sergei Gurin, a drunken athlete. Moreover, Fatyushin was so externally and internally similar to Gurin that later in ordinary life he was very seriously considered by many to be a former hockey player and alcoholic.

The brilliant actress Irina Muravyova did not like her rude and even vulgar heroine Lyudmila, who is everything that she could not stand in people. By her own admission, she even cried with resentment. But be that as it may, Irina Muravyova in the film “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears” played one of the most powerful and significant roles in her career.

Nikolay and Tonya

Shy Tonya, or Tosey, as her screen husband Nikolai affectionately called her, could be such actresses as Galina Polsky, Lyudmila Zaitseva and Natalya Andreichenko, however it was in the performance of Raisa Ryazanova that Tosia looked the most reliable, and this role itself became the most memorable and truly significant in the creative life of the actress. At the same time, as Raisa Ryazanova later recalled, the image of Tosi did not make her famous at all, since all the other fame went to the other two performers of her on-screen friends, Katya and Lyudmila.

For the supporting actor Boris Smorchkov, who played more than eighty roles in the movie for his professional career, the image of Nikolai also became the only work of this level in his entire career. For his brilliantly played role, one of the landmarks in the entire film “Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears,” according to the audience, Boris Smorchkov by and large received only many warm memories and many years of friendship with his on-screen wife Raisa Ryazanova.

Other actors and roles

Director Vladimir Menshov managed to shoot a picture in which there is not a single episodic role. Even the smallest and fleeting image is important and complete.

In particular, such characters as the hostess in the hostel, performed by actress Zoya Fedorova, for whom the work in the film under discussion was the last in her life, or the deputy chief of the main board Anton, who was played by the wonderful Vladimir Basov and his famous phrase: "At 40, life is just beginning "- as important as the presence of the main characters.

Lia Akhedzhakova in the film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" became the owner of a very small, but very bright role. She played an energetic and purposeful director of a dating club, extremely surprised by the fact that Catherine, who came to her from the Moscow City Council, is also alone, like all her wards.

The daughter of Catherine Alexandru was played by a young twenty-year-old actress Natalya Vavilova. Her parents were categorically against the shootings, and only Alexei Batalov managed to persuade them to give their consent, resisting the charm of which was completely impossible.

Oleg Tabakov in the film “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears” played an important role of Vladimir, Katerina’s lover, in his image and presence outlining the very impossible side of Catherine’s loneliness, beyond which she has nowhere to go.

Opinion of the Mosfilm Arts Council

The reaction of the art council of the Mosfilm film studio to the picture shown to him was a long silence. At that time, strict censorship was fashionable to scold, not praise. There was nothing to scold, but it was not fashionable to praise. The council was silent, grunting approvingly. The first could not resist the director of the film studio Sizov. Being a rather harsh man, very far from sentiments, he got angry at cautious praises from his seats, got up and unexpectedly for already desperate Vladimir Menshov said that, in his opinion, “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears” is a film that millions of viewers can love . However, then, face to face, he asked Menshov to cut out some intimate episodes.

In the end, the picture was viewed by L. I. Brezhnev himself, who came from her in a real delight. From that moment on, the happy fate of the film became a settled issue.

Menshov and the Oscars

In 1981, Vladimir Menshov, along with the entire crew, was invited to the annual Academy Awards, but the director was never released from the country.

At that time there was still no Internet, and the fact that his film “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears” became a laureate in the nomination “Best Film in a Foreign Language”, Menshov learned much later than the ceremony itself. On the solemn day of the announcement of the winners, he was sitting at the radio and trying to catch the Voice of America radio station, but because of the interference he could not make out anything.

The golden statuette “overtook” the director only in 1989, after eight whole years. She was handed over to Menshov during his awarding of the Nika Prize.

Instead of an afterword

According to official statistics, already in the first year of hire, the number of viewers who watched this wonderful picture in only one territory of the USSR exceeded eighty-five million people.

The rights to show the film “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears”, reviews of which exceeded all the wildest expectations, were bought by more than a hundred countries. Like the crushing tsunami, the triumph of the brainchild of director Vladimir Menshov swept across the planet. However, the director himself was not able to attend any premiere of his own picture.

The reason was an anecdotally ridiculous denunciation, revealing the whole predatory essence of the unreliable citizen of the USSR Vladimir Menshov, who dared to admire one day the abundance of food in one of the foreign stores ...

Viewers still consider the film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" a film for all times, soulful, vital and truthful. They call him a classic of Soviet cinema with a terrific plot and acting.