Video: Behind the scenes of the film "Dog in the Manger": why Terekhova was called fury, and Boyarsky wanted to be removed from the role
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Since filming Jan Fried's wonderful musical comedy "Dog in the manger" 40 years have passed, but the film does not lose its popularity, and its characters are still loved by the audience. Neither the actors nor the director expected such success, because the filming process itself and its result aroused great doubts in them, which led to constant conflicts. The novice actor Mikhail Boyarsky at first did not live up to expectations, and the movie star Margarita Terekhova constantly argued with the director.
The genre of musical comedy was his hobbyhorse for director Jan Fried. It was thanks to him that such masterpieces as "Twelfth Night", "Silva", "Pious Martha", "Don Cesar de Bazan", "The Bat" were born. He wrote the script for "The Dog in the Manger" himself, significantly reducing the play by Lope de Vega, which formed the basis of the plot. The shooting took place in 1977 in the Crimea, in the Livadia Palace and Park, while excursions did not stop there, and tourists became witnesses of the filming process, and local residents became members of the crowd. So, artists of the local amateur folk opera got into the frame, one of whom helped Karachentsov to perform a serenade.
The role of Teodoro could have gone to Oleg Dal or Oleg Yankovsky, but the director risked giving it to the young and inexperienced Mikhail Boyarsky, already approved for the role of Marquis Ricardo (Karachentsov's character). Boyarsky was so shy in front of eminent artists that in the first days of shooting he did not show the desired result and did not live up to the director's expectations. For the ardent Teodoro, he was too constrained and squeezed, and they wanted to remove him from the role, but then Margarita Terekhova intervened, insisting that the actor was given a chance to open up. And she turned out to be right - Boyarsky coped with this role just brilliantly and turned out to be so convincing in this image that Yungvald-Khilkevich drew attention to him and invited him to his film.
But Margarita Terekhova after Tarkovsky's Mirror was a real star and not only felt confident on the set, but could also afford to argue with the director. The role of Diana seemed to her not deep and dramatic enough, and she constantly tried to make her own adjustments to it. In Teodoro, Jan Fried wanted to see not a romantic hero, but a comic character, and the actors had to persuade him. “With“The Dog in the Manger”, I think a miracle just happened. She was born on our antagonism, but we literally had a war … And Yan Borisovich resigned himself. And our proposals began to be accepted, we even built a mise-en-scene for the most decisive episode in which Diana and Teodoro are explained,”recalls Margarita Terekhova.
Mikhail Boyarsky admitted: “Terekhova on the site has always been a fury. She could disrupt the shooting because of a trifle: "If this bush is visible in the frame, then I will not enter the frame." Sometimes Freed argued with her quite energetically. However, it is useless to argue with women, especially if this woman is Terekhova. After a lengthy "dialogue" Fried and Terekhova parted in corners and did not speak for forty minutes. But the Cold War did not last long. Soon they could quietly and peacefully sit at the same table and dine, compliment each other. But as soon as filming resumed, everything was repeated from the beginning."
On the set, real Spanish passions were in full swing. The director believed that Terekhova often overdoes it, and the scene in which Diana slaps Teodoro in the face should be played "easily, almost without touching." But Terekhova assured him that the audience would not believe her in this case. And she whipped Boyarsky across the face with such force that he really started bleeding and tears came out. “I felt like a beaten dog,” the actor admits with a laugh, years later. They say that it was after this that they switched to "you".
Many corners of the Livadia Palace and Park, captured in the film, have remained unchanged to this day: the Italian courtyard, the marble bench on which Diana sat, the staircase with the chimera, the wrought-iron gates. But the bench on which Teodoro wrote a letter to Diana disappeared without a trace, and there is no longer that fountain, from which the heroes were sorting out the relationship.
The picture was released on January 1, 1978 and became a real treat for the audience. Since then, the number of her fans has only grown. However, there are also critics who reproach the director for deviating from historical accuracy. Fashion historian Alexander Vasiliev noted that neither the costumes nor the interiors in the film correspond to the 17th century in Spain, and style inconsistency reigns in the frame.
This actress had an incredible appeal and remained a mystery to many: Margarita Terekhova - "black box with secrets".
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