Video: "You are my only": how Dmitry Astrakhan shot his most famous film, and what happened to his actors
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
On March 17, the Soviet and Russian film and theater director, Honored Art Worker of the Russian Federation celebrates his 60th birthday Dmitry Astrakhan … He shot more than 25 films, the most popular of which were "Everything will be fine", "Crossroads", "Give me moonlight", "Yellow dwarf". In the 1990s, when Russian cinema was going through a period of crisis, Astrakhan created films that became real symbols of the era. The first work that brought him audience love and awards at film festivals was the film "You are my only one".
In the early 1990s. this story was close and understandable to everyone: the former boxer, in order to somehow make ends meet, was forced to work as a loader. And when he is faced with a choice: a prosperous life in America with a friend's sister in love with him or an unsettled life in a one-room Khrushchev house with his wife, whose feelings for whom still have not faded away, the hero chooses love and remains in Russia. Despite the simplicity and melodrama of the plot, the film turned out to be deep and soulful. The director sees his secret in the following: “I think that good cinema is always about these timeless values: love and betrayal, meanness and heroism”.
The director made the biggest bets on the actors who were supposed to play the main characters at the age of 40: “It took such a couple so that the audience would unconditionally believe in the love that the heroes had not squandered in 20 years of marriage.” Alexander Zbruev for the role of Timoshin was approved immediately, and Astrakhan decided that Marina Neyelova would look the most harmonious with him in the frame. But she did not answer phone calls for a long time. Therefore, other actresses auditioned for the role of Timoshin's wife - Olga Ostroumova and Lyudmila Gurchenko. But when Neelova appeared on the set, all doubts disappeared. “It immediately became clear to me that Marina Neyelova should play, that they would be combined absolutely. Although, oddly enough, before that they had never filmed together. And we didn’t know each other at all,”Astrakhan said later.
The rival of the heroine Neelova was played by Svetlana Ryabova. In creating the image of a millionaire who came from America, the most difficult thing was to choose a wardrobe. Fashionable clothes and jewelry had to be looked for all over Moscow - in the early 1990s, such luxury was not sold in stores. We managed to rent an expensive fur coat, and on the set it was she who became the main character, not the actress: when, according to the script, she threw the fur coat on the steps, the props rushed after her, shouting: “Where are you throwing her ?! Well, you have to take it back! Well, are you stunned or something ?!.
Astrakhan worked with many actors in several films. He explained the motives of his choice simply: "I invite only those whom I love to my films." The main character in his youth was played by 20-year-old Mark Goronok. For him, this was the first role and one of the two that the audience remembered. Three years later, he played the main role in the film of the same director "Everything will be fine", and then disappeared from the screens. After that, he worked for a short time at Lenkom, and then, having survived an unsuccessful marriage and a creative crisis, he changed his field of activity - now he is organizing celebrations.
For Ksenia Morozova, who got the role of Anya in love with the main character in her youth, this work was the first and last in the cinema. The film career did not work out for Maria Lobacheva, who played Natasha Timoshina in her youth - she chose the theater. And Svetlana Ryabova today is the leading actress of the Satire Theater.
The title of the film was a line from the popular song by Yuri Vizbor "You are my only one", which he wrote 30 years before filming. The bard himself, unfortunately, did not live to see the premiere and did not find out that his song found a second life after that.
Astrakhan admits: “I came to cinema at the end of eras. It was 1989. The country was changing, the approach to cinema was changing. If I followed the Soviet scheme, I might not have made it. Then there was a system of personnel training: everyone started from the bottom, as a rule, from VGIK, only a few managed to break through to the top. Commercial cinema was then treated with caution, and the director claims that he was the first to attract "private money" for the production of the film.
The film received several awards: the Grand Prize of the Presidential Council and the Jury Prize of the Grand Competition to Alexander Zbruev for Best Actor at Kinotavr, the Silver Pyramid prize and a diploma to Marina Neyelova for Best Actress at the IFF in Cairo, the Academy Award Nika to Marina Neyelova for Best Actress and others. Despite her successful film career and early fame, the path to happiness of Marina Neyolova was long and difficult.
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