The unpredictable Gennady Shpalikov: " I'm flying off somewhere, like a tree from a leaf "

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

Gennady Shpalikov, a poet and screenwriter, an incredibly charming and bright person, learned very early what success is. Many believed that he had a great future ahead. However, his life was very dramatic …

I lived as I lived …

Gennady Shpalikov was born in 1937 in Karelia. When the war began, his father, a military engineer, was drafted to the front, and he never returned from the war. There was no doubt that Gennady would become a military man, and in 1947 he was sent to study at the Kiev Suvorov School, then Gennady entered the Moscow Higher Military Command School. But it so happened that he had to leave the service in the army - due to a serious injury. However, Gennady was not at all worried about this, because, while still being a Suvorov soldier, he realized that army service was not for him. "Down with your orders, orders and orders", "Again and again in the field of view the walls opposite are boring-white, like everything is disgustingly tired", "Gray days of the tape" - so he writes in his poem "Tired".

After retiring from the army, twenty years old, Gennady thought about what to do. Once at VGIK, I realized that it was here that he would like to study - an extraordinary atmosphere, beautiful girls from the acting department … And although the competition was huge, Shpalikov was admitted to the screenwriting department.

And a cheerful student life began, lounged from session to session, walked around Moscow at night, it happened, did not leave for weeks. Shpalikov felt that he was in his element, he was always surrounded by friends.. Everyone was bribed by his disinterestedness, kindness and irony, it was interesting with him.

Pavel Finn, screenwriter, recalled:

While still a student, he wrote the script for the venerable director Marlen Khutsiev's film "Zastava Ilyich". The picture for that time turned out to be very unusual, everyone worked with great enthusiasm, but the fate of the film turned out to be unenviable. Khrushchev, having watched it, considered the film "ideologically harmful", and was not allowed to rent it. The picture was subjected to merciless censorship, they demanded to rewrite the script, making it "ideologically sound work". How is it so, a picture with such a promising title "Ilyich's Outpost", and in it "three guys and a girl wander around the city and do nothing." Shpalikov did not want to rewrite anything, sometimes disappearing because of this for weeks. As a result, whole pieces were cut out of the film, even its name was changed, and it began to be called "I am twenty years old."

But the famous Polish director Andrzej Wajda, having watched the original version of the film, which lasted three hours, said: “I'm ready to watch it a second time right there, right now!”

In 1962, Shpalikov was invited to work on the lyric film "I Walk Through Moscow" directed by Danelia. And although in this film there are again "three guys and a girl", and the film "again it is not clear what is about," the director managed to defend the script. We worked on the film “easy, fast and fun”, and soon it was released on screens, one of the best Russian films. The audience loved both the film itself and the song that sounded in it. The song, like the script, was also written by Shpalikov, and wrote it in just a few minutes, during filming. Yes, he wrote everything very easily and quickly, like drawing with a pencil …

The film came out not solemn and pretentious, which were then held in high esteem, but simple, light and cheerful.

Then several more scenarios followed, according to which the films were staged. And the final scene from the film “A Long Happy Life, in which Shpalikov was the director, amazed even the great Antonioni.

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All these scripts were written by Shpalikov by the age of 24, famous directors worked with him, they wrote about him, his light poems, filled with purity, sad irony and humanity, and touching, sentimental songs, found a response in the soul of his peers and not only them. His songs were sung by the whole country.

Poems by Gennady Shpalikov, superbly performed by Mikhail Efremov and Alexander Yatsenko, to goose bumps …

But the 60s, with their heady freedom, were replaced by other times, the 70s, and Shpalikov remained the artist of his beloved 60s …

In addition, the diktat of officials from Sovkino was unbearable for him, he could not adapt, as many did at that time. And already at the beginning of the 70s, a period of lack of demand began for him, which entailed an aggravation of the problem with alcohol, a discord in the family began, which ended in divorce. His wife was the famous actress Inna Gulaya, by that time they already had a daughter, Dasha. After leaving home, he began to wander among friends and acquaintances.

More and more often, heavy thoughts began to visit him.

And in the fall of 1974, he took his own life. He was then only 37 years old.

There was a note nearby:

And the last poem that he wrote, and which was found after his death, was this:

One of his closest friends, Viktor Nekrasov, wrote:

For all fans of this wonderful poet piercingly sad poem "Do not take part in me …".