"Dark Night": the story of a song that warmed soldiers' souls

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

There are songs that become much more than just a piece of music. This is exactly what happened with Nikita Bogoslovsky's song "Dark Night". The song, literally hastily written, has become a real hymn to life and hope.

In 1942, at the Tashkent Film Studio, which became the focus of cinematographers and theater workers, Leonid Lukov shot the film "Two Soldiers" - a story about the friendship of two soldiers at the front. There was no song originally planned for this film. But already when the shooting was almost coming to an end, the director demanded from Nikita Bogoslovsky the musical accompaniment of the scene in the dugout.

Bogoslovsky later recalled that one evening Lukov came to him with the words: "You see, I just can't get a scene in a dugout without a song." And so brightly, in an actor's way, the director told about this song that a miracle happened: Bogoslovsky sat down at the piano and played the whole melody of a song that did not yet exist. This happened to him for the first and last time in his life. Luke immediately phoned the poet Agatov, who arrived immediately and by the morning had written to the already finished music.

Mark Bernes, who usually taught songs for months, prepared "Dark Night" in 15 minutes. The song was immediately recorded and the very next day the scene in the dugout was filmed with the soundtrack of a new song.

The film "Two Soldiers" has forever become a hallmark of Mark Bernes, who not only sang the song, but also played the temperamental joker and joker - Odessa citizen Arkasha Dzyubin. For this film, Bernes received the Order of the Red Star from the Soviet government, and the title of "Honorary Resident of the City of Odessa" from the citizens of Odessa.

Continuing the military theme in poetry, we recall poem by Rimma Kazakova about children-heroes of the war.