Vladimir Vysotsky in movies

During his years in cinematography, Vladimir Vysotsky appeared in more than twenty-five films. He made his film debut in 1958 while studying at the Moscow Art Theater School, when he played an episodic role of a student called Petya in the film "Female Age-Mates". Vladimir Semyonovich's early filmography was dominated by characters in whose images he appeared briefly on the screen, uttering a few lines. In the 60's directors, inviting Vysotsky to the film, sometimes used his singing potential more actively than dramatic possibilities. The first film work, which changed the "episodic" role of Vysotsky, was the role of the tank driver Volodya in the film of the Belarusian director Viktor Turov "I come from childhood". Widespread fame actor brought participation in the movie "Vertical". In both films for the first time sounded from the screen songs Vysotsky; songs from "Vertical", which gave the action dynamics and sharpness, became a kind of mountaineering folklore and were highly appreciated by the public and critics. The presence of Vysotsky in the picture could be the reason why the movie was screened in limited numbers or not at all. This was the case with Kira Muratova's"Brief Encounters" (1966), which the public saw only in 1987.

In 1968, the actor created the images of the White Guard lieutenant Brusentsov ("Two Comrades Were Serving", directed by Yevgeny Karelov) and the revolutionary underground Brodsky ("Intervention", directed by Gennadi Poloka). In an effort to break the stereotype of antihero and hero in these films, Vysotsky showed the figure of the White Guard Brusentsov so vividly that his portrait came to the fore and required cuts, and the role of the revolutionary was resolved "epathetically", which served as one of the reasons for the film's ban at the box office. In Vysotsky's cinematic career, he used to play ambiguous or negative characters; among them - the criminal Ryaboy ("Master of the Taiga"), the occasional policeman at a wedding ( "War Under Roofs"), maximalist Von Koren ("The Bad Good Man"), a man with a "stalled conscience" He in the film "The Fourth", "shabby seducer" Boris Ilyich ( "The One and Only..."). The actor also had positive characters: revolutionary underground Nikolai Kovalenko (Georges Bengalsky) in the adventurous "Dangerous Tour", a prisoner of war Solodov ("The Only Road"), Ibrahim Hannibal ("How Czar Peter the Great Married Off His Moor"). Vysotsky's last acting work was participation in television films: he played the role of Gleb Zheglov in "The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed" (directed by Stanislav Govorukhin, premiere November 11, 1979) and Don Guan in "Little Tragedies" (directed by Mikhail Schweitzer, premiere February 29, 1980). In 1987, Vysotsky was posthumously awarded the USSR State Prize "for the creation of the image of Zheglov in the "The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed" and the author's performance of songs".

Vysotsky acted not only in films, but also in television plays and did voice-over work: his voice can be heard in cartoons and in the documentary "Ilf and Petrov". As an author, he wrote more than a hundred and thirty songs for films, including "Brotherly Graves", "Song about a Friend", "Brodsky's Song", "House of Crystal", "Couplets of Bengal", "Ballad of Love", "Interrupted Flight" and others. A considerable part of the works he wrote for the cinema were rejected by the studio's art councils at the stage of preparation or removed from the film during the commissioning or editing.

Vysotsky was not able to realize his plans related to scriptwriting. The scripts he wrote (alone or as a co-author) were not accepted for production. The only exception was a joint script with Igor Shevtsov for the film "Green Van", which was actually accepted (subject to revision) by the Odessa Film Studio in 1980; however, this project remained unrealized. Since the second half of the 1960s, Vysotsky's appearance on the screen was always accompanied by press coverage; in 1975, the "Iskusstvo" Publishing House published the book Actors of the Soviet Cinema with an article by Irina Rubanova entitled Vladimir Vysotsky, which became the most complete lifetime study of the artist's cinematic work.

How many versions, how many disputes?

All over the place!

People know more about the actor

Even more than he knows himself.

Vladimir Vysotsky, from "The Actor's Song"

Vladimir Vysotsky and cinematography

In 1976, Vladimir Vysotsky, in response to a question from a correspondent of the Bulgarian newspaper "Druzhba," talked about how he would set his priorities if he were to go back to the beginning of his creative path. Their order -in terms of importance- was as follows: "Perhaps in this new life I would mainly write. From time to time I would be asked to play on stage. I'd sing a little for friends. Well, and probably I would be filmed, if there were interesting roles". Cinematography at that time (even before the actor's participation in the films "Little Tragedies" by Mikhail Schweitzer and "The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed" by Stanislav Govorukhin) was not among the main interests of Vysotsky in life; perhaps this is due to the fact that his screen biography was not as impressive as the stage. Nevertheless, Vladimir Semyonovich's desire to work in the film industry remained: it is no coincidence that in the same interview he mentioned several names of world-class directors with whom he would like to work; among them were Fellini and Bergman.

The star of over 25 films, Vysotski never won any state awards or titles during his lifetime (he was awarded the USSR State Prize posthumously in 1987). In general, his film career, especially at the beginning, was not easy. The actor did not have the first prominent role, as it was the case with Lyudmila Gurchenko ("Carnival Night") or Vladimir Ivashov ("Ballad of a Soldier"). In the early filmography of Vladimir Semyonovich there were characters in whose pictures he appeared for a few seconds, saying one or two lines. In the second half of the 1960s, the directors of a number of films were more interested in Vysotsky's songwriting than in his acting potential. During this period, the artist's film roles often coincided with the images of heroes from his works. At the same time, Vysotsky's "semi-legal existence" in the culture sometimes forced filmmakers to "entrust" his voice to other performers.

Vysotsky's film heroes are mostly homeless people, as critic Irina Rubanova wrote. It was almost impossible to see them in a domestic, comfortable environment; their place of residence was a tent (in the films "Vertical" and "The Master of the Taiga"), a rented apartment ("Two Comrades Served"), a hotel ("The Fourth"). Perhaps the reason why his characters were mostly vagabond romantics, not attached to the household, lies in the fact that the energetic time forced and the actor and other "sixties" constantly removed "from the forced places" in search of new experiences, this sign of the era was picked up by cinematographers. However, the best works of the actor, according to the critic Oleg Kovalov, are not associated with modernity, but with participation in historical paintings or screen classics: Don Juan ("Little Tragedies"), Brodsky ("Intervention"), Brusentsov ("Two Comrades Served"), Von Koren ("Bad Good Man"), Zheglov ("Meeting Place..."). Captain Zheglov became the hero whom the audience "'forgave' the absence of songs".

In some of his movie roles, strength is clearly distinguished from egocentrism, masculinity from provincial demonism. For him, such concepts as "man's work" and "men's work" were real. This is confirmed by all his performances in film and theater: from Khlopusha to Svidrigailov and Captain Zheglov.

Vladimir Vysotsky's filmography

Year	Type	Title	Note
1959	f	Female Age-Mates	Student Petya (episodic role)
1961	f	Dima Gorin's Career	Elevator installer Sofron
1962	f	713 Requests Permission to Land	U.S. Marine Soldier
1962	f	Shore Leave	Sailor Peter, Valezhnikov's friend
1963	f	Penalty Strike	Gymnast Yuri Nikulin
1963	f	The Living and the Dead	Cheerful soldier (episodic role)
1965	f	On Tomorrow's Street	Foreman Pyotr Markin
1965	f	Our House	Radio technician
1965	f	The Cook	Andrey Pchyolka
1966	f	I Come From Childhood	Tank captain Volodya (songwriter and singer)
1966	f	Sasha, Little Sasha	Singer with a guitar (episodic role)
1967	f	Vertical	Radio operator Volodya (songwriter and singer)
1967	f	Brief Encounters	Geologist Maksim (songwriter and singer)
1967	f	War Under Roofs	Policeman at a wedding (performer of a song in the episode); the movie was released in 1971.
1968	f	Intervention	Michel Voronov / E. Brodsky (author and singer of the song "Like everyone else, we are cheerful and sullen..."); the film was released in 1987.
1968	f	Two Comrades Were Serving	White Guards lieutenant Alexander Brusentsov
1969	f	Master of Tayga	Ivan Ryaboy, rafting foreman (songwriter and singer)
1970	f	Dangerous Tour	Georges Bengalsky / Nikolay Kovalenko (songwriter and singer)
1970	f	White Explosion	Captain (episodic role)
1973	f	The Fourth	He
1973	f	The Bad Good Man	Zoologist Nikolai von Koren
1975	f	The Only Road	Driver Solodov (author and singer of "Solodov's Song"); Yugoslav premiere: January 10, 1975 and Moscow premiere: May 3, 1976.
1975	f	The Flight of Mr. McKinley	Street singer Bill Sigger (ballads' author and singer)
1976	f	The One And Only...	Boris Ilyich, head of the choir workshop (author and performer of the song "Chase")
1976	f	How Czar Peter the Great Married Off His Moor	Abram Gannibal
1977	f	The Two of Them	Episodic role of Maria's colleague
1961	ts	Eagle Prairie	Directed by Leonid Pchyolkin; episode; performance of a fragment of the song "White Snow..."
1965	ts	Room	Directed by Leonid Pchyolkin; episode; starring: Lyudmila Komarovskaya, Dalvin Shcherbakov, Veniamin Smekhov, Lyudmila Abramova, Eduard Arutyunyan
1979	s	The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed	MUR captain Gleb Zheglov (performing a fragment of A. Vertinsky's song "The Lilac Negro")
1980	s	Little Tragedies	Don Juan

First roles

Vysotsky's film debut took place in 1958, when he, a third-year student at the Moscow Art Theater School, was invited to play the role of a student Petit in Vasily Ordynsky's melodrama "Female Age-Mates". Subsequently, the actor not without irony told about the beginning of work in the film, mentioning that the only replica of his character ("coffer and trough") he pronounced from excitement "high voice and stuttering". As clarified Vysotskovoved Mark Tsybulsky, in fact, the student Petya exchanged with his interlocutor not one, but two short sentences, but the role was really discreet: in total, Vladimir Semyonovich was present on the screen no more than fifteen seconds.

Much more remarkable was the role of the editor Sofron, played by Vysotsky in the film "Dima Gorin's Carrer" (1961). The filming took place in the Carpathians in bad weather. In the story, the hero of Vladimir Semyonovich had to overcome the cold mountain river and climb the forty-meter electric power transmission, Vysotsky, who was in good physical shape, performed difficult tricks without understudies. The episode in which Sofron was actively courting Galya Beryozka (the heroine of Tatiana Konyukhova) was shot on the first day of shooting. According to the script, in love with Galya Gorin (Aleksander Demyanenko) for too free behavior had to punish the "rival" with a punch in the face. There were many takes, and Vysotsky, according to him, received from Demyanenko nine real blows to the jaw: "This is how my acquaintance with cinema began — with such an unfair fight". Despite the fact that the image of Sofron turned out to be very colorful, critics ignored both the movie and Vysotsky's character.

In the first half of the 1960s, Vysotsky often got the opportunity to participate in films thanks to the requests of Levon Kocharyan, who worked as a second director. Thus, on Kocharyan's recommendation, the actor got the role of the sailor Peter in "Shore Leave" (1961). Despite the fact that the hero of Vysotsky appeared in the picture only in a few episodes, the actor recalled the shooting on the cruiser "Mikhail Kutuzov" as a work with full vzhivaniya in the role: "I lived there for a month, slept in the orlop deck. I learned to scrub the deck".

Under Kocharyan's patronage, Vysotsky also took part in the first Soviet disaster film "713 Requests Permission to Land" (1962), where he got the role of an American marine. The picture, shot in the genre of "political detective", Vysotskovedami assigned as a separate milestone in the film biography of the actor, because the image created by him drew the attention of critics for the first time. The reviewer I. Razdorsky in an article devoted to "713..." ("Moscow Film Week", 1962, May 20) called his character a "good little guy" who nevertheless behaves too recklessly in the cabin — "as in an occupied country". Then followed small roles of the gymnast Yuri Nikulin ("Penalty Strike", 1963), Brigadier Markin ("On Tomorrow's Street", 1965), episodes in the films "The Living and the Dead" (1964) and "Our House" (1965). The work in Fyodor Filippov's film "Sinner", where Vysotsky played a certain Pyrtikov, ended with the fact that the cut of his small role was completely cut out, while in the credits of the film the actor's surname remained.

In 1966 Edmond Keosayan's lyrical comedy "The Cook" was released, in which Vysotsky played the role of the Kuban tractor driver Andrei Pchyolka. Vysotsky, who was repeatedly accused by the director of offending the regime during the shooting, regularly sent telegrams from the film expedition to Moscow: "To Bolshoy Karetniy, to grandfather Levon Surenovich. Dear Grandpa, take me away from here. Edik is hurting me. In a letter from Krasnodar to his friend Igor Kokhanovsky, the actor reported that "nothing but drinking, in Krasnodar was not interesting. The result of the joint work was not satisfied with either Vysotsky or Keosayan. The actor was dissatisfied with the fact that his hero, repainted in blond, sings to the harmonica songs of someone else in an unfamiliar high voice. Keosayan did not hide his dissatisfaction with the fact that during the dubbing of the film Vysotsky could not be found in Moscow: "So I had to dub him with another actor".

Analyzing the first film roles of Vysotsky, Irina Rubanova noted that each of them could play another actor, they have not yet seen that acting personality, which was later found in his Don Guan or Gleb Zheglov.

Vysotsky, who starred in the films "The Career of Dima Gorin", "Peers", "Dismissal to the Coast", looked back at the cinematic favorites, went not from observation and his own point of view, but from popular models, that is, to independence has not yet sought. To say the opposite now would be an apostasy from the truth. <...> If it is curious today to watch his first films, then perhaps only to see clearly how stubbornly the artist sought his material, how persistently the thought was revealed, with what diligence the technique was honed.

In the second half of the 1960s

"I Come From Childhood"

The first film work that changed Vysotsky as an actor of "episodic" roles was the role of the tank driver Volodya in the film "I Come from Childhood" by the Belarusian director Viktor Turov. They met due to Turov's interest in the author of "unusual songs". In the summer of 1965, Vysotsky came to Minsk for an audition at the suggestion of the film's director, Alexander Knyazhinsky. After the audition, which Vysotsky passed, according to Turov, "not badly", several of his songs were recorded on professional wide magnetic tape. In the evening of the same day, Vysotsky sang his songs to the guitar in the dormitory where the operators lived. Informal communication between the director and the poet turned into friendship. Despite the fact that there were more successful auditions of other actors, Vysotsky was approved for the role.

The thirty-year-old gray-haired tank captain, who had been burned in a tank during the war and had a scarred face, was chosen by the director to be the author and singer of his songs (they were not included in Gennady Shpalikov's script). In August the film studio "Belarusfilm" signed a contract with Vysotsky to write and finish three works for the following films: "Brotherly Graves", "Stars" and "Height". Viktor Turow successfully integrated the songs deeply into the plot of the film; it was impossible to remove them without damaging the picture. "Brother's Graves" in the film was performed by Mark Bernes. Vysotsky liked his heartfelt performance. According to the testimony of Bernes' wife, Lilia Mikhailovna Bernes-Bodrovoy, Vysotsky himself invited Mark Naumovich to perform this song in the movie.

The film was shot in Slonim, Grodno, Smolensk and Yalta. According to the recollections of the crew members, Vysotsky behaved "as his own" while working on it, creating a friendly atmosphere of trust and complicity around him. The picture appeared on the screens at the end of 1966. For the first time the poet's songs sounded from the screen, and in the credits his name appeared for the first time in a new capacity — as the author of songs. After numerous approvals and re-voicing in the film fully included two works - "In the cold, in the cold..." and "Brotherhood Graves", three - partly ("Height", "Song of the Stars") and two lines from "Penal Battalions". In terms of acting, Vysotsky did not fully realize himself in this picture. The film received mixed reviews from critics; according to Turov, the press "trashed" it twice. The reviewer of the magazine "Isskustvo Kino" A. Vartanov wrote: "There are no significant human characters, and the actors, in fact, there is nothing to play. V. Belokurov, E. Uvarova, N. Urgant, V. Vysotsky find themselves in a very strange position, as if something remembered from previous roles, trying to fill the void of characters, but in vain ... "

"Vertical"

External media
Audio
| Mountain climber [1]
| A Song About a Friend [2]
Video
| A Goodbye to the Mountains [3]
| A Song About a Friend[4]

In the early summer of 1966, the Taganka Theater toured Georgia. During his stay in Tbilisi, Vysotsky received an invitation from the Odessa Film Studio to participate in the film shooting about mountaineers with the working title "We — Idiots". In those years the film studio, like any other company, had a compulsory production plan: the Odessa studio had to release five films by the end of the year. A very weak script, later renamed "We — the Possessed", reached the novice directors Stanislav Govorukhin and Boris Durov in April 1966. Their attempts to rework the plot of the work ended in failure, and the debutants decided to base the film on songs — to make "a kind of poem about the mountains". At first the creators of the picture tried to attract Yuri Vizbor to participate in the project, but he, dissatisfied with the dramaturgical material, refused to work. Vysotsky gave his consent and was approved almost without a trial for the role of the radio operator Volodya. The script and the role of the radio operator Borodacha, who stayed in the camp and warned his comrades of the danger, interested Vysotsky much less than the possibility of writing songs for the film.

"Vertical" divides Vysotsky's life into before and after. After this movie, Vysotsky's fame skyrocketed <...> vertically upwards. He saved "Vertical" from oblivion, if not for Vysotsky's songs, the movie would have been firmly forgotten. The film's director Stanislav Govorukhin admits that: "The movie owes its success to Vysotsky first and foremost, both his songs and his appearance on the screen".

The work of the film group took place in the Elbrus region, in the Baksan Gorge, and included mandatory climbing courses for the actors. The head of the group of instructors of the film was a professional mountaineer Leonid Eliseev. The shooting, which took place in real conditions at an altitude of over 3000 meters, required from the actors qualifications at the certain level, and in some scenes and masters of sports in mountaineering. According to the results of filming Vladimir Vysotsky received a certificate and badge "Mountaineer of the USSR". Eliseev, who became friends with Vysotsky and told him episodes from his mountaineering practice, became an unwitting co-author of the first written for the film "Song about a friend". If at the beginning of work on the film Vysotsky complained in a letter to his wife that he could not write about what he "did not know" and doubted the successful result, then, according to Govorukhin, soon the actor was imbued with the idea of mountaineering, and the songs "poured out of him like a cornucopia". The final version of the film included five of Vysotsky's songs; two of them: "Mountain Climber" and "The pure ice on the Earth, the pure..." were not approved. As a composer, the film's creators invited the then little-known Sofia Gubaidullina. Her music for the film and orchestrations to Vysotsky's songs were accepted by the Hudsovet, who nevertheless had complaints about the picture itself: the commission did not like the ending, the lack of a pronounced dramaturgy. Due to the lack of time for reshoots, the film appeared on the screens without changes. In June 1967, the film "Vertical" was released in wide distribution. Most of the viewers saw Vysotsky on the screen for the first time, got acquainted with his new works, discovered that he was not a representative of the blatant world, singing about "little criminal", which sounded from tape recorders all over the country, but a dramatic actor and author of songs of various themes. The film was a big box office success. It was seen by 32.8 million viewers. "Vertical" noticed and critics, whose opinion was almost unanimous: "The film is weak, but the songs are good". Vysotsky's acting was not emphasized in the reviews, but the lyrics of the songs were printed in many publications.

In the songs, and partly in Vysotsky's character from the film "Vertical", there are collected inner motives, sometimes already worked out, sometimes only sketched. He would develop them in his later roles. There is the theme of strength that strangely turns into weakness, the theme of unrequited love, the sacred belief in male friendship and mutual support, as well as the motif of being unrooted in everyday life, the eventlessness of his characters, which is constant in all of Vysotsky's film roles without exception.

Brief Encounters

In the summer of 1966, Vysotsky told Lyudmila Abramova that he had read the script of the film "Brief Encounters", written by Kira Muratova and Leonid Zhukhovitsky, at the Odessa film studio, where he had come to negotiate with Stanislav Govorukhin about filming "Vertical": "A good script, a good role, the protogonistic one and again wearing beard". Vladimir Semyonovich passed the auditions; according to him, were quite successful, but the leader of Hudsovet approved for the role of geologist Maxim another artist — Stanislav Lyubshin. Just before the launch of the picture in production found that Lyubshin is bound by contractual obligations with the tape "The Shield and the Sword", and the creators of "Brief Encounters" were forced to return to the candidacy of Vysotsky. As recalled operator Gennady Karyuk, 1966-1967 years for the actor became a period of endurance tests, because he had to combine work at the Taganka Theater with simultaneous participation in two films.

The story of geologist Maxim's short-lived romance with the young barmaid Nadia (Nina Ruslanova's film debut) and his complicated relationship with his wife — Executive Committee official Valentina Ivanovna Sviridova (this role was played by director Kira Muratova after the approved Soviet actress Antonina Dmitrieva did not arrive on the set) is the core of the film "Brief Encounters", shot in the "natural" style of the 1960s. Maxim is a typical hero of the "sixties": unaccustomed, lonely and homeless; he combines "Hemingway's" desire for free wandering with Pechorin's desire for novelty. He leaves his loved ones without drama, returns without excuses, speaks of love with a light irony, and hums songs with tired mockery: "In the enchanted swamps / There live kikimors...". According to film historian Anna Blinova, only once in the soft film "the true Vysotsky broke through in a contrasting way": we are talking about the episode when Nadia, appearing at night at the geologists' campfire, brings Maxim a sewn jacket.

And here in the picture: first Maxim's eyes shone, then his silent, passionate appeal. <...> Vysotsky did not utter a single word, he showed the state of his hero's instant infatuation by his facial expression and plasticity. It was a moment of truth that convinced us that the geologist Maxim could be one of the great achievements of Vysotsky, if the image was created not in half tones and half voices, not with irony, not with feigned lightness, but with full force.

When accepting the editing of "Brief Encounters" editorial board of the film studio made a number of complaints. In the conclusion of the commission, dated February 16, 1967, in particular, it was stated that the song performed by Maxim "Golololod" should be replaced, because it "carries a lot of clues, forcing a completely different interpretation of the entire film. Then the studio received a letter from the State Committee for Cinematography, which noted that the heroine Nadia, "coming together with Maxim, in essence, commits a deeply immoral act. However, the authors do not condemn her for this, they do not give a moral assessment of Maxim's actions. Despite the fact that first in the director's script, and then in the picture were made changes, the final verdict of officials remained harsh: "The film did not turn out and the image of the hero. In the performance of actor V. Vysotsky character Maxim gets a vulgar shade. As a result, the tape received the lowest category and was quickly excluded from distribution. Nevertheless, Vysotsky called his role in "Brief Encounters" one of his favorites.

Intervention

External audio
| Fairy Tale Song About The Eevil [5]
|Pure Ice [6]

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