Behind the scenes of the film "We'll Live Until Monday": Why the leadership of the State Film Agency demanded to ban filming

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

50 years ago, Stanislav Rostotsky's film "We'll Live Until Monday" was released. It became the hallmark of the actress Irina Pechernikova and the next creative peak of Vyacheslav Tikhonov. The film story was incredibly popular with viewers, and officials saw it as a threat and prevented its release on screens. For many actors, the film became a landmark, and Vyacheslav Tikhonov helped to abandon the decision to leave the cinema. If not for this role, the audience would never have seen Stirlitz in his performance.

The script is based on the story of Georgy Polonsky "We'll Live Until Monday." Based on it, he created a script, which became his graduate work at the Higher Scriptural Courses. This was the first work of a 28-year-old author, and no one expected such psychological authenticity and depth from an aspiring writer and playwright. According to his plan, the main character, the history teacher Melnikov, is a mature man, who has seen a lot, a front-line soldier with a serious wound. Therefore, the author was categorically against the candidacy of Vyacheslav Tikhonov - he was too young and handsome for this role. However, the age makeup and talent of the actor did their job, and the image turned out to be very convincing.

Tikhonov himself also did not immediately agree to participate in the filming. Prior to that, he played the role of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky in "War and Peace", which was given to him at the cost of incredible mental efforts, besides, he was dissatisfied with the result (""). He did not like himself so much in this role that he even seriously thought about leaving the cinema. His hero, the history teacher Melnikov, was also at a crossroads, his attitude to the profession was changing and his life priorities were being reassessed, which made him doubt whether he had the right to teach. It was because of the closeness of the internal conflicts of the actor and the hero that Rostotsky insisted that Tikhonov play this role.

The actor had a lot of doubts about this image: "".

For many young actors, participation in Tikhonov's film was a real gift of fate. Working with the master both attracted them and frightened them at the same time. Irina Pechernikova told: "".

Svetlana Svetlichnaya and Valentina Shendrikova auditioned for the role of the English teacher, played by Irina Pechernikova, but the director chose an "unlit face". Pechernikova played this role in one breath, although at first she also wanted to refuse it: "".

The audience might never see this film, as the management of the State Committee for Cinematography found the story of an elderly teacher going through a period of revaluation of values too poignant. In addition, the officials considered that the script distorted the image of the Soviet teacher and discredited the school system itself, which was not shown at all in line with the official ideology. Therefore, they prepared a letter to the Minister of Culture demanding to ban the shooting. But the process has already begun, and the ban was miraculously avoided. The director said: "".

But even after the film was filmed, it was not immediately released. From the State Committee for Cinematography, a letter came in which it was said that the launch of the film "Let's Live Until Monday" was the biggest mistake of the film studio. Gorky. At the request of the censors, it was necessary to re-sound the episode in which the students are asked to write an essay on the theme "Happiness is …" and the teacher says: "Everyone will write that happiness is in work." In this they saw irony in relation to the immutable Soviet values and the phrase had to be replaced: "Everyone will write as expected." Complaints also arose about the episode when the heroine Pechernikova, after a conflict with the students, says: “I’m not holding anyone!”, And the class gets up and leaves. This caused indignation: they say, this is disrespect for the teacher, and in the Soviet school this is simply unacceptable. I had to leave only the moment when one boy gets up and claps his desk - and at that moment the bell rings. It becomes clear to the audience that the class has rebelled, although this is not shown.

The film lay on the shelf for six months, and only after it was shown at the All-Union Congress of Teachers, where it was greeted with a thunderous ovation, it was decided to start rolling. The reaction from the general public was even more enthusiastic. According to the results of a survey of readers of the magazine "Soviet Screen" "We'll Live Until Monday" was recognized as the best film of 1968. The following year, the film received the Grand Prix at the VI International Film Festival in Moscow, and in 1970 it became a laureate of the USSR State Prize. Years later, the director said: "".

The film became very popular thanks to the great music that sounds in it. "Crane Song": a school waltz of all times and generations.