Video: Behind the Scenes of the Film "Sadko"
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
April 19 marks the 119th anniversary of the birth of Alexander Ptushko, the creator of the legendary Soviet film fairy tales "Stone Flower", "Ilya Muromets", "Scarlet Sails", "Tale of Lost Time", "Ruslan and Lyudmila". One of the world's most famous directorial works was the film "Sadko", which received the "Silver Lion" at the Venice Film Festival in 1953. The actors who performed the main roles - Sergei Stolyarova and Alla Larionova - were highly appreciated by foreign critics and directors, but for Soviet stars, world fame turned into disastrous consequences.
By the time the filming of the new movie tale began, Alexander Ptushko was already known as the director of the films "New Gulliver" and "Stone Flower", and the fame of an innovator was already entrenched in him: he created the first sound volumetric cartoon "The Lord of Life" and the first full-length film with three-dimensional animation " New Gulliver ". For "Stone Flower" the director received the Stalin Prize and the Prize for Color at the Cannes International Film Festival. And the next film - "Sadko" - brought him the second most important prize, "Silver Lion" in Venice.
Alla Larionova began acting as extras in the 8th grade of the school, and her first major film work was the role of Lyubava in the film "Sadko". After the premiere of this picture, the 22-year-old actress woke up famous. And after the film was shown at the Venice International Film Festival, Larionova was recognized abroad. For a debutante, it was simply an unprecedented success. Years later, she recalled: "".
Italian newspapers wrote about "the sun of Venice in Alla's hair", the actress was called "the youngest, the most cheerful, the most beautiful." Many foreign directors invited Alla Larionova to act in their films, Charlie Chaplin announced that he was ready to shoot Larionova in his new film without samples. But the filmmakers answered for her: they say, she has a filming schedule planned for many years in advance! Of course, this was not true, but Larionova did not complain that she could not act abroad: "".
Upon her return to the USSR, Larionova starred in 2 more films, and then a scandal erupted. The Minister of Culture Aleksandrov drew attention to the young spectacular actress and once invited her to dinner. After that, rumors about their romance immediately appeared, and this played a cruel joke with them. Soon Aleksandrov fell into disgrace, and the authorities used these rumors as incriminating evidence against an objectionable official. Alexandrov was removed from office, and Larionova was no longer filmed in films without explanation. She had already been approved for the role of Vasilisa in Ptushko's next film "Ilya Muromets", but could not come to the shooting: the theater simply did not sign a business trip. Only after the actress decided to write a letter to the new Minister of Culture, she returned to the screens, but since then she was offered only cameo roles. So the early triumph played a fatal role in the fate of Larionova.
No less dramatic was the fate of the actor who played the role of Sadko - Sergei Stolyarov. Unlike the debutante Larionova, at that time he was already a movie star - Stolyarov became famous in the pre-war period thanks to the main role in the film "Circus" by Grigory Alexandrov. At the time of filming in "Sadko" the actor was already 40 years old, and in his filmography there were already 14 prominent roles. The role of Sadko brought him worldwide fame, he was called a real Russian fairy-tale hero. The judges of the Venice Film Festival included Sergei Stolyarov in the list of the best actors in the world in the 50-year history of cinema, while he was the only Soviet actor on this list.
However, after his triumph abroad, Sergei Stolyarov was soon forced to leave the cinema. His son Cyril said: "". In the 1960s. he starred a little, and the management of the Theater of Film Actor used this fact as an excuse to get rid of the "inconvenient" actor: he was accused of not fulfilling the established norm and was fired. In 1968 he was diagnosed with cancer, and a year later the 58-year-old actor passed away.
This film was supposed to be the debut work in the cinema of Andrei Mironov. At the age of 11, he auditioned for the role of a beggar boy from the crowd. He was supposed to appear in the frame in dirty rags, and from childhood Andrei was distinguished by disgust and did not dare to try on this dubious "suit" on his naked body - and put it on over a clean T-shirt that looked through holes in the sackcloth. They say that this angered the director so much that the young actor was removed from the role. As a result, Mironov's film debut took place in the 4th year of the institute in the film "And if this is love?"
The Soviet film was based on the Onega epics about the Novgorod guslar and the merchant Sadko. The heroes of Russian folklore were unfamiliar to foreign audiences, and when in 1963 the American director and producer Roger Corman bought this tape for distribution in the United States, he turned Sadko into The Magical Journey of Sinbad, renaming not only the main character, but also his native city: instead of Novgorod, Kopasand was mentioned in the film. The screenplay adaptation for this version of the film was written by 23-year-old Francis Ford Coppola.
But at home, Ptushko's film was repeatedly criticized: for example, film officials were embarrassed that the magic Phoenix Bird would be played by a woman, and at the same time "". The behavior of Sadko in foreign countries seemed to the reviewers colored "": in the episode with the Vikings, they found "", which produced "". Pictures of merchant feasts in Novgorod were abbreviated as "".
The role of the Phoenix Bird in the film was played by Lydia Vertinskaya. This work became her film debut. She starred in several more Ptushko films, and then left the cinema forever: Why Lydia Vertinskaya disappeared from the screens.
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