Post in memory of Valentin Gaft: Gone is a shy genius who "does not rhyme with anything "

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

Valentin Iosifovich Gaft is a whole era in theater, cinema, on television. The era that December 12, 2020 went with him. He was multifaceted and contradictory, in the most incredible way he combined incredible charm and a rare uncompromising attitude, shyness and self-esteem. It was not for nothing that Mikhail Kazakov once wrote the lines: “About Gaft to rhyme? What for? Gaft doesn't rhyme with anything …"

Shy genius

He was born and raised in a family completely far from art. Father Joseph Ruvimovich went through the entire war, after that he worked as a lawyer, mother Gita Davydovna, as befits a Jewish wife, was engaged in housekeeping and raising her son. And he grew up as a completely normal boy: he scattered things around the apartment, disappeared all day in the yard, fought, stuffed bumps and did not study well at school.

But one night Valentin Gaft suddenly decided to become an artist. This thought seemed to him so brilliant that he was even surprised: how it had never occurred to him before. At the same time, he did not at all dream of fame, applause and main roles. It was just that the acting profession seemed to him simple, especially since when he entered, he did not need physicists and mathematicians who were not given to Gaft.

After choosing a future profession, Valentin Iosifovich began to engage in amateur performances. In his memoirs, he describes this period with his inherent ease and self-irony. Allegedly, most of all he liked to participate in school theatrical performances, where he played female roles, because of the opportunity to skip school. But between the lines you can see what a colossal work was behind this seeming ease.

Preparing to enter the theater, Valentin Gaft overcame his shyness and self-doubt every day. He asked his neighbor Yevgeny Morgunov to listen to him and give advice. Together with their friend Volodya Kruglov, they went to Irakli Andronikov to take from him brilliant stories, in full confidence that they would certainly do with them. Then the writer ardently persuaded two schoolchildren: they will never become artists. And after Andronikov often told his relatives about the visit of two funny boys, one of whom had grown into a talented actor.

Before the second round of auditions, Valentin Iosifovich met Sergei Stolyarov in the park, walking with his setters, and again, overcoming his own shyness, approached and asked to help him prepare for the audition. All these were tiny episodes characterizing the actor as a purposeful and stubborn person.

Of course, he entered the Moscow Art Theater School. At the same time, Igor Kvasha and Mikhail Kazakov, who were already students, helped him and persuaded the admissions committee to give the ever-worried applicant a higher score. They were imbued with some inexplicable sympathy for Gaft and were passionately worried about him.

It all starts with love

Valentin Gaft's work is an actor's path to his viewer and to himself. His talent was original and multifaceted, he was applauded by millions of spectators, and he remained the same boy, vulnerable, shy and insecure. This quality was noted in the actor by everyone with whom he happened to work, including Eldar Ryazanov.

At the same time, Valentin Iosifovich was very emotional and quick-tempered, and legends circulated about his intolerance to rudeness, meanness and rudeness. Faced with unworthy behavior, Valentin Iosifovich turned into an angry tiger and was almost ready to pounce with his fists at a man who crossed the boundaries of decency.

When Valentin Gaft began to write his famous epigrams, his relations with many colleagues were completely ruined. At the same time, the reason for this was precisely those poems that Gaft did not write, but released them under his name.

The actor's poems were really biting, sarcastic and sharp. But he wrote them only to those whom he really loved, whose talent he admired. He never set himself the goal of offending or offending - it was not in his rules. But, like a good artist, he noticed the characteristic features and revealed them in the epigram. Surely, this is what offended colleagues. Although Eldar Ryazanov believed that becoming the hero of Gaft's epigram is a great honor, which not everyone is awarded.

Many tried to imitate him, diligently rhyming lines that could be a worthy answer to Gaft. But "Gaft does not rhyme with anything …" He was too unique and inimitable.

Valentin Iosifovich could bring colleagues to complete exhaustion, seeking the ideal embodiment of the image of his hero. Even voicing some kind of robot for a training film, he did at least a hundred takes if it seemed to him that his voice did not correspond to the role of an eight-year-old hero. Liya Akhedzhakova recalled how she was shocked then by the actor's demands for himself.

This exactingness of his fully extended to his colleagues on stage or on the set. Valentin Gaft felt any role, lived it, passing it through himself and then sharing his feelings with other actors, helping them to understand their characters. He loved his profession with devotion and selflessness, gave himself entirely to it and was still modest and shy in assessing his talent. He admired great actors, was proud of the fact that he stood on the same stage with Maretskaya and Plyatt, but never ranked himself among them.

Past tense

It is absolutely impossible to talk about him in the past tense. Despite the fact that in recent years the actor was very sick, he went on stage as soon as his health condition allowed him. Overcoming pain and despair, weakness and infirmity, he got up again and again and walked towards his viewer.

But his voice will no longer sound from the stage, new epigrams will not appear, films with his participation will not be released. He's gone forever. But the memory of the Great Artist will remain. And the lines of his poems will sound, and Valentin Gaft will watch ironically from the screen, as if mocking death itself.

Valentin Gaft and Olga Ostroumova became the perfect couple, having gone through four official divorces for two before. Their wedding took place in a hospital ward without witnesses, and today they remember it as one of the brightest events in their lives. And most importantly, their late love is real.