Behind the scenes of the film "Young Wife": Why the shooting became fateful for Anna Kamenkova, and Sergei Prokhanov was almost deaf

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

40 years ago, Leonid Menaker's film "Young Wife" was released, which was watched by more than 35 million viewers. For the actress who played the main role, Anna Kamenkova, he became significant, because not only brought her all-Union popularity, but also in many ways became consonant with her fate. What the actress had in common with her heroine, and why the "mustachioed nanny" Sergei Prokhanov went deaf during filming - further in the review.

Director Leonid Menaker was known for his work on the military-historical theme, and no one expected that he would take up shooting a village melodrama. However, in a simple story about a girl who, after betraying her groom out of despair, marries an elderly widower with a child, the director was able to discern the psychological depth and truth of life. And this is not surprising - after all, the script was created on the basis of the story "Behind the Stone Wall", written by the master of psychological prose Irina Velembovskaya. Based on her books, they shot both "Sweet Woman" with Natalia Gundareva in the title role, and "Women" with Inna Makarova.

The writer became the screenwriter of the film "Young Wife". She made concessions to the director and made edits to the ending, which in the story was harsher and darker. There, the main character did not want to change, did not cope with his difficult character and in the end was left alone - the story was not at all about how to "endure and fall in love." And in the film Manya and Alexei gradually get used to each other, rub in and find a common language. The happy ending gave hope to thousands of viewers who recognized themselves in this story, although to some critics it seemed illogical and implausible.

Claiming the main role of 25-year-old Anna Kamenkova, the director took a risk: she had little shooting experience, and she did not look like a country girl at all. When the young actress was invited to audition, she did not even count on success: although Anna began acting as a child, her film career did not work out in any way - the actress was often invited to auditions, but other actresses were approved for roles. Kamenkova decided to make one last attempt, and in case of another failure, to focus on work at the Theater on Malaya Bronnaya. There she was entrusted with serious roles that require great mental effort. She came to the audition tired, pale, with circles under her eyes.

At first, Menaker was disappointed - for the role of the country girl Mani, he was looking for a blue-eyed, pink-cheeked girl with a long braid, and Kamenkova did not match this image at all. And behind her back, the actress heard: “” She immediately remembered all her failures at the auditions, and from frustration in the very first scene she burst into tears. It was one of the most dramatic episodes of the film, and the director found Kamenkova very convincing. So much so that he immediately approved her for the main role.

Unlike Anna Kamenkova, who was not known to the general public, Sergei Prokhanov at that time was already a real movie star - after his role in the film "Mustache Nanny" he received bags of letters, and the directors bombarded him with new proposals. True, they were all of the same type - after this role it was difficult to imagine him in a different way. Therefore, Prokhanov was very surprised and delighted when Menaker offered him a radically different character - a traitor and a scoundrel who deceived the main character. On the set, the timidity of the inexperienced Kamenkova and the self-confidence of Prokhanov played into the director's hands - and their heroes should have been like that. The negative role helped Prokhanov get rid of the image of the "nice guy" in which most directors saw him.

True, one of the episodes was remembered by Prokhanov because … he almost deprived him of his hearing! The heroine Kamenkova was supposed to slap her ex-fiancé in the face, and the actors did not succeed in this scene. To make everything look more believable, the director asked the actress to hit her partner for real, backhand. There were several takes, and 5 times Kamenkova gave Prokhanov a resounding slap in the face. Her hand was heavy, and the actor even went deaf in one ear for 3 days! Nevertheless, Sergei Prokhanov called The Young Wife one of the best films in his acting biography. In the early 1990s. he stopped acting and went into directing, creating the "Theater of the Moon".

The role of Mani was very close to Anna Kamenkova. Her character was an orphan. The actress herself was born into a complete family, but at the age of 9 she lost her mother. Manya married a man of mature age, and the actress made the same choice - a year after the premiere of the film, Kamenkova married actor and director Anatoly Spivak, who was 15 years older than her. This role became a springboard in her film career, and after that she starred a lot. According to the results of a poll of readers of "Soviet Screen", "Young Wife" was recognized as the best film of the year, and at the All-Union Film Festival in Ashgabat, Anna Kamenkova received a prize for the best female role.

The role of the husband of the main character was initially offered to Armen Dzhigarkhanyan, but in the end it was played by Vladlen Biryukov. He was already known for "The Eternal Call", but the actor had no national popularity yet. The nature of the role of a village hard worker was very suitable for Biryukov - in life he was just as stern and tough, but at the same time kind and naive. Anna Kamenkova said that he didn't even have to play - he was absolutely organic in the frame. It was one hundred percent fit. In the 1970s-1980s. the actor starred quite a lot, but in the 1990s. left the cinema forever, focusing on work in the Novosibirsk theater "Red Torch".

She was at the peak of popularity, when she suddenly disappeared from the screens: What caused the long pauses in the film career of Anna Kamenkova.