Behind the scenes of the film "Girl without an Address": Why Eldar Ryazanov preferred to remain silent about his second film

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

A lot was said about the first film by Eldar Ryazanov - "Carnival Night" caused a great resonance and has long become a recognized classic of Soviet cinema. But his next film is almost never mentioned. The beginning of this tradition was laid by the director himself. Although the comedy "A Girl Without an Address" became one of the leaders of the box office in 1958, Ryazanov did not like to remember it. As, however, the actress who played the main role and harbored a grudge against the director …

Eldar Ryazanov started out as a documentary filmmaker, and when Mosfilm director Ivan Pyriev entrusted him with shooting the musical comedy Carnival Night, no one believed in the success of this venture, not even the director himself. He was only 29 years old, he dreamed of filming a drama, the auditions of 21-year-old Lyudmila Gurchenko did not impress him, many scenes had to be re-shot, the estimate was overrun, and the deadlines were behind. But the result amazed everyone: the film became the leader in film distribution, gathering 50 million viewers from the screens. After this success, Ryazanov planned to continue working with Gurchenko, and when he started filming a new lyric comedy "Girl without an Address" a year later, he saw only this actress in the lead role. But here again difficulties arose.

The director was again not enthusiastic about the proposed material, but agreed to any suggestions, “if only they would not be driven from work,” as he later admitted. Everyone expected Ryazanov to repeat the resounding success of Carnival Night, and the director considered his guarantee the participation of the same stars - Igor Ilyinsky and Lyudmila Gurchenko. But unexpectedly, the artistic council came out categorically against this idea. Ryazanov was told that there was no need to shoot the second "Carnival Night": this is a completely different story, so the cast should be new - they say, in the country, besides Ilyinsky and Gurchenko, there are many other worthy artists.

Ryazanov even thought about giving up work on the film. He prepared a second list of actors, but insisted on the candidacy of Lyudmila Gurchenko to the last. Then Ivan Pyryev summoned the director to his office and secretly told him that, by decision of the Minister of Culture, Gurchenko would not be approved for the main role under any circumstances, for the reason that she allegedly refused to cooperate with the KGB. Ryazanov considered it possible to tell about this only in the 1990s, and then he had to come to terms with the decision of the leadership.

Nikolai Rybnikov was approved for the main male role. At that time, he was at the zenith of fame after starring in the films Spring on Zarechnaya Street and Height. However, the new proposal did not please him at all - before that he played a steelmaker-leader and a foreman of installers, and then he again had to embody on the screens the image of a "simple guy from the people", in which the actor did not see anything interesting. Rybnikov feared to be forever "stuck" in this role, and his filmography later confirmed that these fears were not unfounded.

However, the troubles did not end there. Zoya Vinogradova, an actress of the Leningrad Theater of Musical Comedy, was chosen for the role of Katya Ivanova. She even managed to record all the songs for the film, but here in the theater she was faced with a choice: either performances or shooting. And she chose the first one. True, her voice still sounded in the film - it was Vinogradova who sang all the songs of Katya Ivanova.

As a result, a non-professional actress was approved for the main role - an unknown student of the philological faculty of Leningrad State University Svetlana Karpinskaya. She got on the set thanks to a lucky chance: according to legend, once in the metro, the author of the script for Girls Without an Address, satirist Leonid Lench saw her and immediately offered her the main role. According to him, this is how he imagined his heroine when he was working on the script. The actress herself told a much more prosaic story: from her youth she studied in a theater studio, once their performance was filmed at Lenfilm, and the director's assistant drew attention to the talented actress. Be that as it may, Karpinskaya was approved for the main role. Ryazanov was very upset by this choice, but he had to put up with it.

The director's worries were in vain: the debutante without acting education did an excellent job with her role. She had a lot in common with her heroine: she looked as sincere and naive provincial as Katya Ivanova, who had come to conquer the capital. And the actress had the same “quarrelsome character”. Svetlana desperately wanted to be like real movie stars, and she was very worried that she looked ugly in the frame: she was dressed in ridiculous outfits and was forbidden to make up.

Karpinskaya lamented: "". Nevertheless, getting into the image turned out to be one hundred percent, and the audience sent the actress bags of enthusiastic letters. After such success, she sincerely wondered why Eldar Ryazanov did not invite her to his new films and harbored a grudge against the director.

Of course, the success of the film was also a well-chosen cast, because even in the episodes the masters of Soviet cinema were filmed: the grandfather of the main character was brilliantly played by Erast Garin, a fashion designer from the experimental studio - Rina Zelenaya, the Komarinsky couple - Zoya Fedorova and Sergei Filippov. They appeared on the screens for only a few moments, but this was enough for the audience to immediately remember their vivid characters and repeat after them phrases that became winged: "" (the heroine of Rina Zelena in the studio), "" (the character of Sergei Filippov), etc..d.

In 1958, "A Girl Without an Address" took second place among the leaders of film distribution, behind Sergei Gerasimov's "Quiet Don". The comedy was watched by 36.4 million viewers. However, despite the all-Union recognition and audience love, the director himself did not change his mind. He was still convinced that the film had lost a lot due to the fact that Lyudmila Gurchenko did not star in it, and later did not like to remember his second film work, considering it much simpler and weaker than Carnival Night.

One day in the 1980s. Ryazanov said in an interview that this comedy could have become more dynamic, more lyrical and more funny if, at the dawn of his directorial career, he could make decisions on his own. In his book "Unsummed Results," the director talked about filming all of his films, except "Girl without an Address" - obviously, he considered this work undeserving even mention. Fortunately, the audience did not agree with him - the touching and lyrical comedy still evokes very warm feelings in everyone.

Thanks to Eldar Ryazanov, her acting career began successfully, although her fate can hardly be called happy: Why Svetlana Karpinskaya remained lonely.