Known to millions of viewers for her expressive, uniquely strict appearance and unique interpretation of the characters, the characteristic Ukrainian actress Maria Kapnist played more than one hundred and twenty roles in the movie.
Her type is mysterious old women: countesses, sorceresses, secular ladies aged ... Why mysterious? Yes, because, having reincarnated as them, Maria Kapnist filled her heroines with her own energy, inner incomprehensible strength. And the children who saw her in the cinema (which it is impossible to deceive) believed: this is exactly what the sorceress should be.
Catchy roles
Colleagues noticed the phenomenon: when they met the actors they knew, for some reason the kids always always gravitated to “Baba Yaga”, as she called herself with humor. Generous soul, Maria Kapnist always in this case paid attention to her little fans: she enthralled them with a joke or even (if time allowed) started a game with them.
For many generations of young spectators, the image of Sofia Pavlovna became unforgettable. According to the content of the story “Bronze Bird”, this is a former housekeeper. But agree, judging by the acting, to call the performer of this role a servant is to lie.
How much genuine aristocracy invested in her actress! Her appearance completely merged organically with this role: burning eyes, thinness, deep wrinkles, aquiline nose. What kind of housekeeper is there? Rather, “Your Highness”!
And it was this actress, according to critics, who was given the best way to convey the nuances of the image of the old woman Isergil enclosed by M. Gorky (the film “Tabor Goes to Heaven”).
Best movie work
However, experts argue that her best film work was the role of Naina in the film adaptation of Ruslana and Lyudmila. Mysterious, mystical sorceress. Knowing the price ... Soviet directors have long dreamed about such a type of actress. It was this role that brought her all-Union fame.
There was a dramatic episode during the filming of this film. It was initiated by the director Ptushko, and he acted at the same time, to put it mildly, incorrectly.
On one of the shooting days, Maria Kapnist, unprepared, not warned, when she went into the pavilion of Dovzhenko’s studio, she suddenly heard a uterine growl behind her back (tigers always attack from behind.) Looking around sharply, the woman noticed him already about to jump. By the way, just these frames were included in the film.
A direct look in focus at the inhuman colors of gold eyes accomplished the impossible: forced the beast to leave.
After this incident, the actress herself found the strength to return to the hotel, and only entering the room, weakened self-control. Completely empty, she lost consciousness and lay down from the stress experienced in bed for four days.
Congenital aristocracy
However, after this Pushkin film adaptation, Maria Rostislavovna felt what it means to be in demand. Directors lined up for her. After all, her acting skills really adorned the films: the presence of the actress gave genuine expressiveness and significance to the secondary, seemingly episodes.
There was no end to the offers. Critics called her the actress of the episode from God. It is no coincidence that she so convincingly played The Countess in the film Bronze Bird, beloved by many generations of children!
However, real count blood flowing in it also contributed to the reincarnation. She once lived in prosperity and joy. Young Maria, despite her childhood, was not a damsel; she owned a mansion with 70 rooms in Sudak. Once upon a time in a different, pre-revolutionary world ...
There was a large parental mansion - a full bowl, a large friendly family. She was spoiled, loved. She knew from the stories of her parents that somewhere on the Mediterranean island of Zant there are ancient ruins of the castle of her ancestors, the Venetian counts.
History of the Kapnist clan
Secondly, the count's title to the Kapnists was granted by Queen Elizabeth for the courage shown under Ochakov. On the family coat of arms of the fearless Kapnists there was an inscription "In the fire unshakable." The clan was big and noble. The girl’s dad, Rostislav Rostislavovich Kapnist, was a prominent socialite. The mother of the actress belonged to the family of the hetman Sirko, very revered in Ukraine. The full name of the little countess is Marietta Rostislavovna Kapnist-Serko. The girl got black piercing eyes, like the legendary great-grandfather-hetman. There is a story that the French unmotivated left Moscow, after, by secret order of Kutuzov, around Belokamennaya they surrounded an artifact bequeathed to Sirk after the death of his brothers in arms. The ancestor of Mary was recognized by both the military and historians as invincible: 55 battles - and not a single defeat!
Kapnistov salon on Promenade des Anglais was overpopular in St. Petersburg. Maestro Chaliapin himself was hopelessly in love with the mother of our heroine, the beautiful Anastasia Dmitrievna, who knew 18 languages.
Maria Kapnist, who dreamed of the theater in her youth, even received several vocal lessons from a world celebrity. The girl was lively and artistic: she sang beautifully, danced, always was the soul of a youth company ...
Revolution. Family tragedy
15 years of hard labor on indiscriminate charges have done their job: a flowering woman, a noblewoman Maria Kapnist, turned into a countess of mines. The biography of the future actress, as you see, is tragic.
Looking ahead, let's say: fate turned out to be fair to her. She didn’t end (as Vysotsky’s song says) with “fall, sunset,” ahead of the martyress they expected “rise and rise,” in tune with the ancient Roman winged expression “Through thorns - to the stars”.
The horror began after the news from St. Petersburg. The repression of the Kapnistov family immediately fell. The Bolsheviks shot Father Rostislav Rostislavovich in the first days of the revolution. The elder sister Liza, beloved by our heroine, did not survive this and died right away from a broken heart. A native aunt living with the family was shot right in front of Maria. The barbarians who committed this murder somehow felt with their backs the girl’s burning eyes: “Look at how she looks at us, let's shoot her!” The words themselves were found and put into Mary’s mouth with a piercing cry: “You have no such order, you can’t!”
Then in the Crimea, more than 3,000 people were shot without trial. Sympathizing with the family of the late good Count Tatars (the revolution found Kapnistov in Crimea), dressing their mother and children in rags, they helped them take refuge.
The best years are in the camps
But the hands of the Bolsheviks were long. What helped her then in the Gulag not to become hardened, to remain human? Later, the actress will tell: she helped out the dream she saw. Let's talk about this vision. She is in a crowd of people suffering from hunger. And no one except her sees a bag of grain standing on a raised platform. Then she scrambles upstairs and starts distributing grain to people.
“Why this dream?” - Maria asked herself, waking up. And then I guessed: no need to be hardened, you need to remain kind at all costs.
There, in the camps, having fallen in love with the engineer who was shot later, she gave birth to her daughter Radu. Not succumbing to bullying, not having an abortion at the insistence of his tormentors. But when she saw how her daughter was beaten and humiliated in the kindergarten, she could not restrain herself and beat up the sadistic teacher, having received an additional term.
Unshakable in fire
Was there a future actress before beauty, when instead of creams you had to rub soot over the face for years (then there was a chance for the zecs not to be raped)?
The fact that there is a place for a feat in the zone, Maria Kapnist announced in her own way: an act. Once, while working in the mines, she saw that a one and a half-ton trolley from the mountain rolled down on her colleagues standing with her back in misfortune. Without thinking about herself, the little woman rushed across her. Where did this power come from?
And then there was a week of unconsciousness between life and death, crying friends, donating their blood to her.
And what about the other thriller that happened to her: convicts (including our heroine), acting “on concepts”, committed harsh justice on the principle of “death for death” (buried alive in a coal of an escort rapist who shot a woman in the face who refused to to sleep with him)? Time has passed. Arriving at the stage to another camp, Maria Kapnist met him (it is unknown how this villain survived). And for her, recognized, life turns into a nightmare. That maniac begins with the knowledge of his craft to beat her so that the “old acquaintance” would die long and painfully.
On the loose
I can’t even believe that after all this, an actor’s path is possible for a person. Actress Maria Rostislavovna Kapnist theater universities did not finish. Obviously, fate intervened.
But at first it was unbearably difficult. After in 1958, “due to the absence of corpus delicti,” the former “fascist” (the so-called guard in the camps of prisoners serving time under article 58 “Anti-Soviet propaganda”) was released, Mary left for Kiev. There was no housing. I slept at train stations. She worked as a janitor, a masseuse. She dreamed of finding and returning her daughter Radu (being a prisoner, she was deprived of the right to raise her). Perhaps, then only a dream of a daughter kept her in the world.
By chance - in the cinema
Once a characteristic woman in a quilted jacket and makeup (Maria washes soot from her face day after day for seven long years) was noticed by the director Yury Lysenko in a line to a kiosk near Dovzhenko’s studio.
Could he think that the future Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR came to the cinema with his light hand? He then went up to Maria Rostislavovna and asked what kind of movie set she was from. And then he literally dragged her to star in the film "Tavria", created based on the novel by O. Gonchar.
The amateur woman coped with the role of abbess brilliantly. So began the thirty-five-year acting career of Maria Rostislavovna. In 1994, when the last film with the participation of the actress “The Parable of the Light Room” was released, she was no longer alive.
Filmography
We list the main ribbons decorated with its roles.
The end of the 50s-60s | “Tavria”, “Far from the Homeland”, “Flying Ship”, “Dushka”, “We, two men”, “I want to believe”, “War and Peace”, “There are no unknown soldiers”, “Big troubles because of the little boy ”,“ Error Honore de Balzac ”,“ Sons go into battle ” |
70s | “Where are you, knights?”, “Olesya”, “Missing Certificate”, “Ruslan and Lyudmila”, “Old Fortress”, “Faith, hope, love”, “Love at first sight”, “To be afraid of grief - not to see happiness ”,“ Bronze bird ”,“ Soldiers ”,“ If you leave ”,“ Soft-boiled boots ”,“ Tabor goes to heaven ”,“ Wild hunt of King Stach ” |
The 80s | “Piggy Bank”, “Comic Lover”, “Andrey and the Sorcerer”, “Chance”, “The Temptation of Don Juan”, “Premiere in Sosnovka”, “Ivanko and Tsar Poganin”, “Two on the Island of Tears”, “Return Butterfly”, “New Yankee Adventures at the Court of King Arthur”, “Etudes of Vrubel”, “A Man for a Young Woman” |
90s | “Witch”, “Eater”, “Tagged”, “Hearts of three”, “Sucker - the winner of water”, “Dark Waters”, “Anna Karamazoff”, “White clothes”, “Parable about the light room” |
Until the end of her life, Maria Kapnist retained her excellent creative form. Her filmography is evidence of this. She lived in her favorite business - acting, in life she was open, honest, kind and merciful. Those around her loved. The actress's suddenly torn life was like an interrupted flight.
Relations between Maria Rostislavovna and her daughter began to improve only in the late 70s (it took time for her to understand that her mother is a wonderful person). Hitherto, the Rada recognized only the adoptive mother (a poor woman, too, who had lost her own daughter due to the arbitrariness of Lorenius Beria), who motherly loved and raised her.
Fatal accident
The actress's life ended abruptly. As if it were not real, but invented by some writer ...
On an October evening in 1993, actress Maria Kapnist was hit by a car, trying to cross Victory Avenue at the Dovzhenko Film Studio. Thinking, she did not notice the approaching car.
Doctors recalled: even in the hospital, this small, thin woman was distinguished by her natural tact and lack of ambition.
She stoically suffered pain and died from complications while in hospital. 10/25/1993 the city of Maria Rostislavovna Kapnist-Serko died.
Instead of a conclusion
What distinguishes Maria Rostislavovna from colleagues in the acting department? Amazing, incomprehensible natural aristocracy. Dirt didn’t pester her! According to the memoirs of contemporaries, it is precisely to her that it is not known why pure and talented people were drawn. Her apartment, as once the father’s salon in St. Petersburg (of course, in miniature), was invariably visited.
Gossip, meanness, undercover intrigue - all this, unfortunately, is not uncommon in the acting environment. However, her colleagues did not even try to draw her into a dishonest game. She was taller than this, and the dirt did not pester her. Surrounding almost physically felt the crystal honesty of the actress. Undeniable and her talent. After all, even today, the audience loved the film, where Maria Kapnist starred.
Films are the best monument to her, the countess of the Soviet screen.