Video: Behind the scenes of the film "Officers": How Yumatov almost disrupted the shooting, and Lanovoy refused his role
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
46 years ago, on July 26, 1971, was released the film "Officers", which in the first year was watched by more than 53 million viewers. The phrase "There is such a profession - to defend the Motherland" immediately became winged, and the film became a cult one. Such a success would hardly have been possible without the participation of the leading actors - Georgy Yumatov, Vasily Lanovoy and Alina Pokrovskaya … However, the audience is hardly aware that the shooting was on the verge of failure, and the reason for this was everyone's favorite actors.
The idea to create a film about the fate of the officers' wives came to the USSR Minister of Defense, Marshal Grechko. He was also the author of the famous phrase, which became the leitmotif of the entire life of two friend-officers Alexei Trofimov (Georgy Yumatov) and Ivan Varavva (Vasily Lanovoy). However, the film went far beyond the original concept, becoming a whole chronicle of the life of three generations of officers, for whom the concepts of friendship, duty and honor are above all.
Now it is impossible to imagine other actors in the main roles, but then they were chosen from dozens of applicants. Gurchenko, Vertinskaya, Miroshnichenko, Nemolyaev, Chursin, Golubkina and other actresses auditioned for the role of Lyuba. The director gave preference to Larisa Luzhina, but she could not act as she was expecting a child. Then the 30-year-old Alina Pokrovskaya was summoned from the tour, who was to live on the screen the life of her heroine from 17 years to old age. Filming began "from the end", and in the very first scene she was offered to play Lyuba in adulthood. She was very worried, but still coped with the task.
42 actors auditioned for the role of Alexei Trofimov and about 50 for the role of Ivan Varavva. Viewers could see Efremov, Burkov, Rybnikov, Solomin, Vysotsky, Shukshin and even Dzhigarkhanyan in these images on the screen! But the director could not find the "real" officers in any way. He was about to take pictures of his familiar pilot, but he did not have acting skills. The scriptwriter, writer Boris Vasiliev insisted on the candidacy of his friend, the famous actor Georgy Yumatov. True, at that time, most directors preferred not to deal with him - everyone knew that the actor suffered from alcohol addiction and could disrupt the shooting. Rogovoy decided to take a chance.
Georgy Yumatov was a movie idol of the 1950s. There was no person in the USSR who did not know this name. But his all-Union fame played a cruel joke on him - the actor became addicted to drinking. Rogovoy decided to give him another chance, especially since the writer Vasiliev vouched for his friend. But besides the danger that Yumatov might break loose and drink, there were other difficulties. The fact is that the actor at that time was already 44 years old, and at the beginning of the film he was to play a young man. The “rejuvenation” procedure was very painful: pigtails were braided and pulled tightly at his temples to smooth out wrinkles, and his face was smeared with egg white. But this was secondary, because Yumatov had the main trump card - he himself went through the war and knew about the service firsthand. The scar on Trofimov's back, which Lyuba saw in the film, is Yumatov's real scar from injury.
During the filming in Sevastopol, the actor still could not stand it and snapped: so that he did not go on a spree, he was locked in a hotel room, but his fans handed him vodka through the tied sheets through the window. The shooting was in jeopardy, and Yumatov's wife, Muza Krepkogorskaya, who always knew how to cope with his drinking bouts, was urgently summoned to Sevastopol. When she arrived, he admitted that he fell in love with his partner, actress Alina Pokrovskaya. She did not reciprocate his feelings, and this almost played a fatal role in the fate of the film. It is not the first time that muse has saved her husband in such situations, and this time she was able to help him.
The problem was that Vasily Lanovoy became Yumatov's partner in the film, and the actor was offended at him for playing the role of Pavka Korchagin, which he himself dreamed of. But as a result, they not only found a common language, but also made a brilliant acting duet.
Lanovoy refused this role, because he could not understand in any way: if his hero loves one woman all his life, why is he inactive? The director found a way out. He invited Lanovoy to "play a romantic", and then this image seemed to the actor clearer and closer. "" - he said.
The July premiere of "Officers" at the Rossiya cinema took place in a half-empty hall, but Marshal Grechko insisted that the film be shown to Brezhnev. He was able to appreciate the picture at its true worth, and with his approval, a second premiere was held in the fall, this time with full houses. The film became the leader in terms of attendance, and the competition for military schools increased several times.
Unpredictable the fate of Suvorov's Vanechka from the film "Officers": why the young actor abandoned his film career
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