Behind the scenes of "Anna Karenina": Why no one believed that Oleg Yankovsky would play the wife of the main character

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

On February 23, the famous theater and film actor, People's Artist of the USSR Oleg Yankovsky could have turned 76, but 11 years ago he passed away. A few months before his departure, the premiere of one of his last film works, which was also the last joint work with Alexander Abdulov, “Anna Karenina” directed by Sergei Solovyov, based on the novel by Leo Tolstoy, took place. This film, even before its appearance on the screens, caused a lot of controversy, and one of the reasons for them was the approval of Oleg Yankovsky for the role of Alexei Karenin …

The idea to shoot his own version of the adaptation of the famous novel appeared to Sergei Solovyov long ago, back in 1994, but the director was able to start implementing this idea only 15 years later. All this time, he unsuccessfully tried to find funds for an expensive and large-scale project. None of the producers believed in the success of this venture, and the shooting had to be postponed. The Americans offered to solve the issue of financing, but they put forward their own condition: "Anna Karenina" should end with a happy ending. This idea seemed blasphemous to the director, and he refused.

Much has changed during this time. In the main role, Soloviev originally planned to shoot Irina Metlitskaya, but in 1997 the actress died of blood cancer. For 15 years, Andrei Rudensky, whom the director saw in the image of Vronsky, has changed markedly, and he had to look for a replacement. Sergey Bezrukov was approved for this role, he even started filming, but then the series "Yesenin" was launched, and the actor refused to participate in Solovyov's project. As a result, Vronsky was played by Yaroslav Boyko, who received a huge number of critical reviews about the fact that the image he created turned out to be too "cardboard".

However, the most heated disputes flared up around the performers of the roles of Anna Karenina and her husband, for which Solovyov approved Tatyana Drubich and Oleg Yankovsky. Everyone knew that Drubich was the director's muse throughout his entire creative life, that it was he who turned the non-professional actress with medical education into a screen star, that even after the divorce, their cinematic novel continued, and that Drubich was filmed very rarely, but in all the works there was brilliant.

The main complaints boiled down to one thing: Tatiana Drubich was already 47 years old at the time of filming, and her heroine in the novel was 20 years younger. Oleg Yankovsky was much older than his character: he was 63 years old, and Karenin, according to the book, was just over 40. The actress herself did not see a problem in this: "".

However, Soloviev did not doubt the correctness of his choice. Drubich seemed to him similar to Tatyana Samoilova, who played Anna Karenina in the Soviet film adaptation of 1967, which inspired him to shoot: “When I saw Samoilova on the screen, I was amazed: what an exact hit on the type! And it was then that I wanted to shoot YOUR "Anna". When choosing actors, he was guided not so much by external similarity as by internal correspondence to the images. “”, - explained the director.

Drubich's work received very contradictory reviews - someone admired her getting into the character and the fact that she looked much younger than her years, someone called this role a failure. To this the actress reacted philosophically: "".

However, all the critics were unanimous on one thing: Yankovsky and Abdulov were just great in the film! Soloviev was going to shoot Yankovsky from the very beginning - however, according to the director, he was too young and good for the role of Alexei Karenin, whom he applied for. But the actor objected: "" 15 years have passed since this conversation, Yankovsky was already much older than his hero, but he still looked great and enjoyed incredible success with the opposite sex. It is for this reason that everyone who found out that Soloviev had approved him for the role of Karenin was perplexed: well, which of the women would leave Oleg Yankovsky for anyone else!

Soloviev did not regret his decision - Yankovsky created a completely new interpretation of this image, which he understood in his own way. The director said: "". Thanks to this interpretation, many viewers perceived this film as a story about Alexei Karenin, even in the final frame it is he who remains. One gets the impression that Soloviev set himself the task of making the love triangle uneven.

By a tragic coincidence, both for Abdulov and for Yankovsky, this film became one of the last works in cinema and their last joint project. During filming, no one could even imagine this. The members of the film crew said that both of them were then physically and mentally on the rise, were in the center of all events, both were always surrounded by crowds of fans. Sergei Soloviev said: "". On May 20, 2009, the actor died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 65. And a year before that, in January 2008, Alexander Abdulov died.

The debate about which film adaptation was the most successful continues to this day: 7 brightest actresses who tried on the image of Anna Karenina.