Actor's drama "Rada's Gypsies": Why Svetlana Toma considers the film "Tabor Goes to Heaven" a gift of fate and a curse

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

May 24 marks the 73rd anniversary of the theater and film actress, Honored Artist of Russia Svetlana Toma … In her filmography there are more than 50 works, but most viewers know her for the role of the gypsy Rada in the film Tabor Goes to Heaven. This role became the pinnacle of her creative biography and gave her all-Union popularity, but in return it took away a lot and became fatal for her.

The real name of the actress is Fomicheva. She was born in 1947 in Chisinau, and a sonorous pseudonym came from her great-grandmother, a French woman, so the stress in it is on the last syllable: "".

As a child, Svetlana did not dream of an acting profession and after school entered the law faculty of the University of Chisinau, but her fate was decided by a case that became a turning point in her career and in her personal life. Once, at a bus stop, the assistant director Emil Loteanu approached the girl and invited her to act in films. Then she did not take this proposal seriously - she took it as an attempt to get to know each other. But the director showed persistence and convinced her to come to audition for the film "Red Glades".

Svetlana became the muse of director Emil Loteanu, and then his common-law wife. She was his Galatea - it was thanks to him that her development as an actress took place. At that time she was only 17 years old, she was inexperienced, unsure of herself and looked at the director from the bottom up: "". At his insistence, she took a pseudonym - the director believed that Fomichev's surname was not sonorous enough for this profession. The actress did not believe that she would be able to play the main role in the film Tabor Goes to Heaven, but Loteanu saw only her in this image.

The fit was one hundred percent. Svetlana was so convincing in the image of Rada that even the gypsies took her for theirs. Once at the premiere of the film in Vinogradov, where the shooting was taking place, a gypsy baro approached her and said: “” And in the cinema in Kharkov, the gypsies occupied the hall, and when the actress came out to them after the screening, they did not believe that it was the same Rada. In life, the actress was not at all like her heroine: "".

But the scammers used the resemblance to the Rada - after the film was released, several ensembles toured the country under the name "Tabor Goes to Heaven", where the soloist was Svetlana Toma, who actually did not know about it. The impostors gave interviews to journalists and pretended to be an actress in hotels, which caused her a lot of trouble.

This role became the actress's finest hour. The film became the leader of the box office in 1976, gathering 65 million viewers from the screens, and won the main prize at the International Film Festival in San Sebastian, and Svetlana Toma was recognized as the best actress of the year according to a poll by the Soviet Screen magazine. "Tabor …" was purchased by 112 countries of the world, and this became a record for film distribution.

But this success had a flip side: after the release of the film, the actress was offered the same type of role, she played gypsies several times. Svetlana admitted: "".

The creative drama was followed by a personal tragedy: after this film, the relationship between the actress and the director, which had been difficult before, came to naught. Soon he began filming the film "My affectionate and gentle animal", where the main role went to 16-year-old Galina Belyaeva, who soon became his wife. And Svetlana played a cameo role and was forced to come to terms with the fact that another woman took her place both on the set and in the director's heart. But she found the strength to understand and forgive the person whom she never stopped loving.

In the 1990s. in the era of the crisis in cinema, Svetlana Toma, like many actors, remained unemployed. She got a job as a realtor, but this profession did not bring income, she often had to sit on bread and porridge. But she did not complain about fate and was not afraid of any work. In the 2000s. she was lucky enough to return to the set again. Her daughter Irina Lachina also became an actress, and in several projects they played together.

Until now, she calls him the most important man of her life. Emil Loteanu and Svetlana Toma: an endless romance.