Andrei Konchalovsky and his Vivian: Why the Soviet director could not get along with the rich French heiress

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

Andrei Konchalovsky was rightfully called one of those men who are able to conquer almost any woman. He has only five official marriages on his account, and it seems that he himself cannot count the number of novels. True, after marrying Yulia Vysotskaya, the director became an adherent of a strong family, but in his past there are many secrets and mysteries associated with his personal life. At one time, he dreamed of marrying a French woman, but he could not save this marriage.

Craving for freedom

Andrei Konchalovsky dreamed of freedom in the 1960s. He was attracted by everything foreign, because this automatically meant the opportunity to visit different countries, get acquainted with their culture and art, communicate with different people and see new horizons.

The foreigners seemed to Konchalovsky as people from another planet. He could, without any hesitation, examine them from head to toe, inhale unfamiliar scents and be surprised to note their similarity with those like himself. The young director was openly jealous of those who came "from there".

No, his fellow citizens did not arouse such a feeling in him, because even those who had been abroad remained the same familiar and understandable. But residents of other countries behaved in a special way, spoke, and their behavior was very different from the behavior of ordinary Soviet citizens.

He had occasion to visit foreigners. Many things then seemed extraordinary to Andrei Konchalovsky: whiskey and imported cigarettes, completely unusual food, unfamiliar music. And the surveillance by the security forces, black-marketeers and informers in the environment were perceived as some kind of adventure and a certain price to pay for freedom.

And it seems that one day his finest hour came. Nikolai Dvigubsky, a friend of Konchalovsky, took Andron with him to visit a French banker who lived with his family in the legendary National. Together with them was their child's nanny, Vivian Godet, a student at the Institute of Foreign Languages in Paris, who came to improve her Russian language.

The girl's family was very wealthy, and her grandmother owned oil fields in Romania before World War II. Vivian was charming and spontaneous, she had huge green eyes, and she could joke with French charm about the manner of the director who tried to snuggle up to her in the narrow corridor.

Friendship for three

Konchalovsky and Dvigubsky began to look after Vivian. The three of them appeared everywhere, and after that Andron came up with the idea to go to Kstovo in the Gorky region, where he had filmed Asya Klyachina two years ago. He passionately wanted to show the Parisian woman the real Russia, and the thought that Vivian needed to take permission to leave Moscow did not immediately visit his bright mind. However, as a precaution, Konchalovsky ordered the girl to pretend to be a resident of Estonia.

The three of them went to Kstovo again, slept all together on a Russian stove, sang songs with the locals and ate vodka with cucumbers. At the same time, Vivian immediately stopped the attempts of any of the men to cross the border of what was permitted. From the outside, it seemed that their relationship was just friendship.

And then he hit her. At dawn, the two of them sat in a boat almost on the very bank of the Volga, immersed in fog. Vivian burst into tears from an excess of emotions, and Konchalovsky suddenly hit her in the face. Even at that moment, he could not explain his act. As if all his desire for this woman suddenly splashed out in shock. He was saying something, but she absolutely did not understand either his words, much less his blow. They left the next day. Neither he nor Vivian ever remembered that scene on the Volga.

He was once in love with Masha Merrill, a French actress of Russian descent. In his opinion, she left him, and for a long time he experienced his failed happiness. And Vivian for Konchalovsky became like a thin thread connecting him with Paris. With the city where Masha lived.

And he proposed to Vivian. However, after him the same words were uttered by Kolya Dvigubsky. Vivian chose Konchalovsky.

The news that Andron was going to marry a Frenchwoman excited his entire large family. At the same time, everyone knew: to persuade Andrey to abandon the venture was a thankless task. To his own surprise, he was given permission to marry Vivian almost without problems and was even allowed to travel abroad with his wife. But before starting to prepare all the necessary documents, Konchalovsky honestly warned an acquaintance from the Central Committee: if they interfered with him, he would arrange a grandiose, if not a global scandal.

A big difference

Over time, it turned out that Vivian was completely different from all his previous women. She could, in a fit of anger, tear off the curtains from the window and simply tear them to pieces. For the first time he saw a woman with such a temperament and for the first time thought that life with a foreigner could be more difficult than he had imagined.

Nevertheless, all the difficulties were at first smoothed out by his new outlook. Konchalovsky fell in love with Paris immediately and forever. He opened the doors for him to a new world. It was unusual to feel like a resident of this beautiful city, and not a member of a delegation or a mere tourist. Later, the couple returned to Moscow, and left for Paris to give birth to their daughter Alexandra Vivian.

But the character of Konchalovsky's wife turned out to be very difficult. Vivian had her own point of view on everything, including the duties and rights of men. If he was going to play roulette, and Vivian was against, it was necessary to prepare for the fact that the horn of the car in which Vivian sits would not stop until he returned.

However, they somehow coexisted together. Andron often left, he had to work, because he could not imagine his life without cinema. And marriage with Vivian has long lost its charm for him. When he told her that he had fallen in love with another, Vivian called him a scoundrel, tried to talk, but everything was in vain: he had long been tired of the difference in their worldview. Moreover, by that time another woman had really appeared in his life. But that was a completely different story.

Before meeting with Yulia Vysotskaya, Andron Konchalovsky already had four marriages, five children, many films and world fame behind him. She has a fictitious marriage with a classmate and work in the Belarusian National Theater. More than 20 years have passed since the first meeting between Andrey Konchalovsky and Yulia Vysotskaya, and even today they look at each other with admiration and tenderness.