Behind the scenes "Mirrors": Why Margarita Terekhova called the meeting with Andrei Tarkovsky the main event in her life

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

On April 4, the famous Soviet film director and screenwriter Andrei Tarkovsky would have turned 88, but back in 1986 he passed away. One of his most famous films was the film "The Mirror" with Margarita Terekhova in the title role. Most viewers knew her as Milady from The Three Musketeers and Diana from Dog in the Manger, and few people know that she was called “Tarkovsky's actress”, and she herself considered meeting this director one of the most important events of her life. … What actually connected them?

For Andrei Tarkovsky, this film was an autobiographical, a kind of confession built on complex associative rows and images, a series of dreams and memories, where he drew parallels between himself and his father - the divorce of his parents, post-war childhood, his own divorce. The main character is painfully afraid of losing the understanding of his loved ones - his wife, mother and son, and, trying to save his family, he turns to childhood memories, trying to find answers to his questions and justification for his feelings in them. In the first version, the script was called “Confession”. The difficult relationship with his parents did not let the director go, led him to comprehend the past, and the script was based on his memories of childhood and family. The voice of his father sounded off-screen, his mother took part in the filming.

Tarkovsky said about his idea: "".

The script for "Mirrors" in many ways echoed the fate of the director: when he was 5 years old, his father, the poet Arseny Tarkovsky, left the family. Both father and son experienced similar events - leaving their wife and children, searching for love and a painful feeling of guilt in front of loved ones. The author of books about Tarkovsky, Leila Alexander-Garrett, film critic and translator, wrote about him: "".

Margarita Terekhova has acted in films since 1965, but before filming in "The Mirror" she appeared on screens, mainly in films-performances. She considered her mentor in cinema Andrei Tarkovsky, who was the first of the directors to truly reveal her creative potential as a deep dramatic actress. In his film, she played 2 roles at once - the hero's mother and his wife, and in fact, the same female type in two times, before and after the war. After that, she worked with the director only once - in the play "Hamlet", but it was Terekhova who was called "the actress of Tarkovsky."

Tarkovsky called Anatoly Solonitsyn and Margarita Terekhova ideal actors, because they "trust the director like children." But even despite this absolute trust, mutual understanding on the set did not appear between them immediately. Terekhova was accustomed to working independently on the image, to build the drama of the role, and Tarkovsky did not want from her a game, but direct, lively reactions, the reliability of psychological states. Therefore, he did not even let her read the script.

Usually all the actors were in awe of his genius and did not dare to object to him, and everyone was very surprised when Terekhova refused to fulfill the tasks assigned to her. In one of the scenes, her heroine had to chop off the head of a rooster, which the actress flatly refused to do and left the set, throwing in her hearts: "" Tarkovsky took her aside and said: "" Nevertheless, the director refused this episode.

One of the unique features and main advantages of Terekhova, the director considered her negative charm, a kind of duality and mystery, the ability to be both attractive and repulsive at the same time. He considered meeting her his luck, admired her sincerity and spontaneity on the set and later called her "an ordinary genius actress." And during the rehearsals of the play "Hamlet" once said to her: ""

Colleagues whispered that such a special attitude of Tarkovsky to Terekhova was dictated by his personal sympathy, and that there was an affair between the director and the actress. But it was too easy to be true. When, 5 years later, the actress had a son, and she did not give the name of his father, some even attributed paternity to Tarkovsky, which was not true. Tarkovsky's sister said that on the set a spark ran between them, and the director himself admitted: "". It is unlikely that his words can be taken literally - in the same film his wife was filmed, who was constantly nearby, and Terekhova was, rather, a source of inspiration. True, the members of the film crew argued that the women could not stand each other, and the director's wife complained that he pays all his attention only to Terekhova, and does not work on her role.

The secretive Terekhova did not comment on their personal relationship at all, invariably admiring Tarkovsky's professionalism and calling working with him a gift of fate and one of the main events in life. And it really was. The actress said about him: "".

Working with Tarkovsky became an era of formation for Terekhova as an actress and divided her creative biography into “before” and “after”. But their relationship was, rather, a creative romance of Genius and Muse. After Tarkovsky, the actress simply could not afford to act in bad films and agree to roles in TV shows - perhaps that is why she disappeared from the screens so early.

In the Soviet box office, Zerkalo was given only the second category, but abroad Tarkovsky's film was appreciated at its true worth: he received the prize as the best foreign film shown in Italy in 1980. And according to a poll by the International Film Critics Association, Zerkalo entered the top -100 of the best films of world cinema.

She is called one of the most mysterious domestic actresses, because she did not reveal her secrets to anyone: 3 marriages and 2 secrets of Margarita Terekhova.