Released in 1965, the household comedy “Give The Complaint Book” is one of thirty works by the outstanding film director Eldar Ryazanov, which perfectly conveys the atmosphere of the sixties. Eldar Aleksandrovich, who passed away in November 2015, left a wonderful legacy, among which the most famous films are “Carnival Night”, “Watch Out for the Car”, “Office Romance”. But the unpretentious comedy about the fight against bureaucracy and rudeness “Give a plaintive book”, whose actors (even starring in the episodes) make up the elite of domestic cinema, occupies a worthy place in his filmography.
A brief plot of the picture, the main characters
The journalist Nikitin (actor Oleg Borisov), while visiting the Dandelion Café, a heavy institution with stucco and plush from the category “went, got drunk and had a fight”, is really drawn into a brawl and ends up in the police station. His main weapon is a pen, which he used, writing a stinging feuilleton to an outdated institution, by his standards, with poor service, walking along the “icy indifference” of director Tatyana Alexandrovna Shumova (actress Larisa Golubkina), coming from her “beautiful gray eye". The offended leader in the newspaper’s editor recognizes in the author of the sensational article a former visitor to a cafe with whom she suddenly has a romantic relationship.
At the initiative of Nikitin and Shumova, with the help of talented student architects, Dandelion transforms into an island of youth culture, breathing life into the wave of modernism, with its ease and truthfulness. The plot contains a love triangle. Anatoly Kuznetsov, a fiancé of Tatyana Aleksandrovna, the trade official, Kondakov, is wonderful. The main actors of the film “Give the Complaint Book” are already well-known people at that time: Golubkina starred in “The Hussar Ballad”, Borisov in the role of Svirid Golokhvastoy in the comedy “For Two Hares”, but the starring role of Anatoly Kuznetsov in the film “The White Sun of the Desert” was yet to come.
“Horrible yesterday”
The personification of the outdated in life, a bastion of bureaucracy and bureaucracy in the film becomes the immediate head of Shumova - Ivan Semenovich Postnikov, for whom the implementation of the plan is the main indicator of the work of public catering establishments, and it does not matter at what cost this is achieved. They will say about him: “we still have many prisoners.” It was his heroine Larisa Golubkina in the film who called it “terrible yesterday”. The role was brilliantly handled by Nikolai Ivanovich Parfyonov, who was actively filming in the 60-80s. He managed to create the feeling that he was playing himself. All the actors in the movie “Give the Pitiful Book” are real folk favorites. Surprisingly, Parfyonov, filming up to 80 years old, remained only an honored artist.
Anatoly Papanov brilliantly plays the deputy director of Dandelion, an adaptationist Kutaitsev who once “tore out the plush for the restaurant with his teeth” . Always holding his nose in the wind, he seemed to echo Postnikov: “We give the plan.” Under his direct patronage are the waitress Klava and the barmaid Zinaida, who would “better work in the circus,” because she knows how to make water from vodka and wine. Nina Agapova, the future Honored Artist of the Russian Federation, who has counted a huge number of supporting roles, is doing her job worthily. A rude waitress was played by actress Tatyana Gavrilova, who later became the people's artist of the country.
The film “Give the Pitiful Book”: actors and roles of the “sixties”
The young generation, opposing the “terrible yesterday”, is represented by the friends of the journalist Nikitin and student architects. Sister Masha and her wife Tengiz were perfectly performed by Mikael Drozdovskaya, who was well-known for the film “Volunteers”, and Jemal Sikharulidze, actor of the Tbilisi Russian Drama Theater, where his career took place. The role of students went to Vladimir Shirokov and Lyudmila Gnilova, later known as the master of dubbing.
Not for everyone was the beginning of a creative path participation in the film “Give a plaintive book”. The actors who glorified the painting are the older generation of Soviet masters, where the inimitable Nikolai Ivanovich Kryuchkov played the main violin. And he has a bright role - a progressive head of the Trade Department, personifying the "bright future" of the industry.
Old school actors
The participation of Rina Zelena, the legendary actress, whose dozens of animated characters speak, has graced the film “Give a Mournful Book”. The actors and roles of the representatives of the old theater school are so harmonious that they can be considered the property of Russian cinema. Rina Zelena played a cutesy elderly woman in black gloves, a restaurant singer, sadly performing: “I am only 17 years old” and “spring is in my heart”. She so sincerely does not understand why she is not cherished after the reconstruction of the restaurant, which causes real compassion of the audience for the lonely, as if delayed in the past, lady.
Unexpected was the participation of the Gaidaev trinity - Nikulin, Vitsin and Morgunov, in E. Ryazanov’s film “Give the Complaint Book”. Actors act in part in the familiar images of Coward, Experienced and Dunce in a single team representing the store’s director (E. Morgunov), department head (G. Vitsin) and seller (Yu. Nikulin). They were those visitors to the restaurant, with a light hand who fought a fight, and whose conversation at the table, the audience would sort out the quotes: "My wife left me ... in the cinema." The scene in the store with the participation of Vitsin and Nikulin could become a completely independent reprise at any concert venue.
“Give The Complaint Book”: actors and roles in episodes
The uniqueness of the film is that even in the tiniest scenes, wonderful artists starred, the pride of Russian cinema, which made each episode unforgettable. Mikhail Pugovkin played a neighbor, annoying with his obsession in finding a partner in board games. Just a few moments in the frame, but again and again the viewer mentally returns to a recognizable image from the life of the sixties and seventies.
During Nikitin and Kondakov’s performance of the serenade under the windows of Tatyana Shumova, the colorful figure of the janitor involuntarily draws her eyes. It is not known how the girl’s heart is, but her sorrow singers definitely managed to melt her down, since she forgot for a while about her direct duties. Such is the present of the film “Give a Mournful Book”, the actors in the episodes of which are the inimitable Zoya Fedorova as a janitor, the talented Alexander Lenkov in the guise of the leader of a new youth ensemble, pop star Larisa Mondrus, who performed the final song of the picture.
the main role
In his films, E. Ryazanov personally appears before the audience in small episodes. The comedy “Give a Complaint Book” was no exception. The actors recognized not only the director’s talent as a director, but also his ability to surprisingly get used to the images created on the screen. In the picture, he played the chief editor of a newspaper that published a feuilleton and changed the lives of many people. Is this role the most important in the film?