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Video: Behind the scenes of the film "Unfinished Story": Why Elina Bystritskaya and Sergei Bondarchuk pretended not to know each other
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
2 years ago, on April 26, 2019, the famous actress, People's Artist of the USSR Elina Bystritskaya passed away. There are not so many works in her filmography, but among them there were enough roles, thanks to which her name forever entered the history of Russian cinema. Bystritskaya's all-Union fame was brought by the role of Aksinya in The Quiet Don, but few know that the actress got it largely due to the fact that two years earlier she brilliantly played her first leading role in the film An Unfinished Story. However, after that their relationship with Sergei Bondarchuk finally deteriorated …
From nurses to actresses
The audience might never see this actress, because at first she was going to devote her life to a completely different profession. She was born and raised in Kiev, in the family of a military infectious disease doctor, captain of the medical service Abraham Bystritsky. In the family, no one doubted that Elina would also become a doctor. When she was 13 years old, the war broke out. The girl not only refused to leave for evacuation, but also came to the headquarters where her father served, and demanded that the commissioner take her to the hospital as a nurse.
Everyone was sure that she would run away after the first day of working with the wounded, because even adult girls could not stand what they saw there, but Elina steadfastly fulfilled all her duties. Together with other nurses, she grabbed a stretcher with the wounded and carried them to the hospital.
During the war, Bystritskaya graduated from a two-month nursing course, in 1944 she entered a medical college, received a diploma in obstetrician-gynecology and began working in her specialty. Having given birth several times, Elina realized that she would not be able to devote her life to medicine, because in fact, she was attracted by another profession from her youth - acting. Father did not want to hear about it. The maximum that he was able to persuade was to allow her to enter the pedagogical institute. There Bystritskaya organized a drama club. After one of the performances, a spectator approached her and recommended that she enter the theater. This was enough for Elina to finally establish herself in her decision to become an artist.
Bystritskaya entered the Kiev State Institute of Theatrical Art. I. Karpenko-Kary and began performing on the stage of the Vilnius Russian Drama Theater. When the team came on tour to Leningrad, filmmakers drew attention to Bystritskaya, and at the age of 22 she began acting in films. In the first film, she got the role of a doctor, a senior lieutenant of the medical service. Later, she appeared on the screens several more times in this role - without becoming a doctor behind the scenes, Bystritskaya embodied her father's dream in a movie. On this occasion, she said: "".
The director Friedrich Ermler should offer her the same image in his film "An Unfinished Story". For the sake of this work, Bystritskaya refused the role of Viola in the "Twelfth Night" by Jan Fried, instead of her they took Clara Luchko, and many did not understand her act - to refuse the adaptation of the classic Shakespeare for the sake of some melodrama! But the actress did not regret her choice. This was her first major role, and Bystritskaya believed that it was on these sets that she was born as a film actress.
Mutual hostility of Elina Bystritskaya and Sergei Bondarchuk
Sergei Bondarchuk became Bystritskaya's partner on the set. Before that, they had already met on the set of the film "Taras Shevchenko", where the actor played the main role, and the actress was involved in the crowd scene. She had the most unpleasant memories of her first meeting with Bondarchuk: once in the buffet, he rudely pushed her aside and said something obscene about her. Many of their colleagues witnessed this scene, Bystritskaya could not forgive public humiliation and harbored a grudge against Bondarchuk.
On the set of An Unfinished Story, their mutual animosity intensified. Bondarchuk again let go of barbs at her and brought her to tears, she answered him with icy contempt. The director took a lot of effort to persuade the actress not to give up the role, but in the end he had to promise that he would shoot all their dialogues in close-up and without Bondarchuk's participation - Bystritskaya uttered her remarks, referring to Ermler, and the footage with Bondarchuk was filmed separately. On the screens, the actors played a couple in love - a woman doctor and her patient, but behind the scenes they could not hide negative emotions, did not communicate, did not greet, and generally pretended that they did not know each other.
Later, the actress wrote in her book of memoirs: "".
Iconic role
The film ended with a "long shot", a close-up of Elina Bystritskaya, and the director told her on the last day of shooting: "". His words turned out to be prophetic - it was from this role that Elina Bystritskaya's triumphant path in the big cinema began. Largely due to her first success, she got the role of Aksinya in "Quiet Don", which became her trademark.
"Unfinished Story" was watched by almost 30 million people. Elina Bystritskaya was named the best actress of the USSR in 1955 according to the results of a poll by the magazine "Soviet Screen". Viewers sent her hundreds of letters in which they said that "". In the year the film was released, hundreds of girls, following the example of the main character, went to study at medical schools.
However, the most important thing for Bystritskaya was not the recognition of viewers, colleagues and critics, but the praise of her father - only after he saw her on the screen in "An Unfinished Story", he not only resigned himself to the fact that his daughter did not become a doctor, but finally admitted she has a talented actress. And Bystritskaya herself said: "".
Bystritskaya and Bondarchuk were not the only actors who played love in a movie with mutual hostility: 5 beautiful Soviet film couples who in real life could not stand each other.
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