Soviet Cinema Vault

BELOVED SOVIET ACTORS All four shared the same first name — Oleg. Oleg Borisov Oleg Dal Oleg Basilashvili Oleg Yankovsky #BelovedSovietStars

“Ivan’s Childhood.” Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. 1962. His first feature film. Based on a story by Vladimir Bogomolov. The war through the eyes of a boy scout. Ivan has no childhood left. It only comes back to him in dreams. In the frame is a birch grove. Captain Kholin and the nurse Masha. Kholin was played by Valentin Zubkov. Masha was played by Valentina Malyavina. She was 20 then. She was a first-year student at the Moscow Art Theatre School. The scene was shot in a grove outside Moscow, and it was not an easy shot. The film won the Golden Lion in Venice in 1962. For Tarkovsky it was the start of a world name.

“Once There Was a Singing Blackbird.” Directed by Otar Iosseliani. 1970. Gia plays the timpani in the orchestra of the opera house in Tbilisi. The instrument is rarely heard. So Gia has plenty of free time. Dates. Friends. Long dinners. He is always rushing and always late. But at the right moment he makes it in time to strike the drums. It was shot almost like a documentary. This is real Tbilisi at the turn of the 60s and 70s. The film reached Soviet screens in 1972. The lead role was played by Gela Kandelaki. Critics still argue about it. Some say the director condemns his hero for wasting his life on trifles. Others see it differently. His talent was friendship and the gift of making people feel a celebration. The last shot. A clock mechanism. Time keeps going. Watch this film.

THE LOVERS (1969). Directed by Elyor Ishmukhamedov. Some film scenes stay with us forever. One of them is the unforgettable sequence of watermelons floating down a mountain river. The film tells a story of young people, love, friendship and hopes for the future. Set in sunny Tashkent in the 1960s, it captures a time when life seemed full of possibilities and the world lay open ahead. But one of the film's most memorable scenes has a remarkable story behind it. The idea came to the director years before filming. One day, Elyor Ishmukhamedov went on a trip to the mountains with his father in an old Pobeda car. They bought around twenty watermelons and placed them in a mountain stream to cool while they stopped for lunch. Suddenly, a heavy rainstorm broke out. The water level rose, and the watermelons were swept away by the current. Ishmukhamedov jumped into the river after them. He later recalled the experience as a moment of extraordinary excitement, full of thunder, rain, sunshine, a rainbow and rushing water. Years later, that real-life adventure became one of the most beautiful scenes in Soviet cinema. The sequence was filmed in the mountains. Rodion Nakhapetov played Timur, but a stunt double was involved in the dangerous waterfall scene. According to actor Shukhrat Irgashev, a dummy was thrown into the waterfall instead of Nakhapetov. The actor himself was later pulled out of the fast-flowing Chirchik River with a net. Just look at those watermelons drifting down the mountain river. There is so much youth, freedom, sunshine and pure joy of life in this scene. It feels as if youth itself is carried along by the current. For me, this is one of the most wonderful scenes in the history of Soviet cinema.

🎬 On this day in 1934. Chapaev premiered. 92 years ago tonight, Leningrad’s Titan cinema screened one of the most legendary films in Soviet history. It was directed by the Vasilyev “brothers”, Georgi and Sergei, who weren’t actually related, just namesakes. They based it on Dmitry Furmanov’s novel about Civil War commander Vasily Chapaev, whom Furmanov fought alongside. Some details worth knowing: ▪️ The directors used Furmanov’s diaries and the memoirs of his wife, Anna. ▪️ Anka the machine-gunner is named after her. ▪️ They also spent a lot of time in military archives and the Museum of the Red Army, and both had fought in the Civil War themselves. Audiences were gripped from the very first screening. The film became a cultural phenomenon that people watched, quoted and retold for decades. Have you seen it?

🎵 Now playing: a song from a Soviet classic In Pyotr Todorovsky’s City Romance (1970), a lonely X-ray doctor meets a young kindergarten teacher, and two very different worlds try to find each other. The song many viewers remember from the film is Mireille Mathieu’s “Pardonne-moi ce caprice d’enfant” (“Forgive Me This Childish Whim”), a French summer hit of 1970 written by Patricia Carli. Mathieu was adored in the USSR, and this song became tied to the film in people’s memories. Its tenderness and its plea for forgiveness suit a fragile, uncertain love story. Some songs don’t just accompany a film. They become its heartbeat. 🎬

FOUR BEAUTIFUL AND TALENTED SOVIET ACTRESSES — ALL NAMED NATALIA! ❤️ 1. Natalia Varley 2. Natalia Kustinskaya 3. Natalia Fateeva 4. Natalia Seleznyova

“God, it hurts so much…” Those were the last words spoken by Soviet actor Yevgeny Urbansky as his colleagues rushed to his side. The doctors had not yet arrived. On November 5, 1965, exactly 61 years ago, a tragedy in the Karakum Desert claimed the life of one of the most remarkable actors of Soviet cinema. Urbansky was filming The Director, in which he played the leading role of Alexei Zvorykin. The character was inspired by Ivan Likhachev, the director of the Moscow Automobile Plant. A special ramp had been built about 40 kilometres from Bukhara. A car was supposed to race up it and leap into the air. Urbansky was strongly advised to let a stunt double perform the scene, but he refused. He wanted to do it himself. The first take went almost perfectly. The crew decided to shoot another. That second take proved fatal. The car overturned, and the frame of the windshield crushed the actor. The battery came loose and struck him on the head, fracturing his cervical vertebrae. He lay on the sand dune, groaning in unbearable pain. The ambulance managed to get him to hospital alive, but an hour later, Yevgeny Yakovlevich Urbansky was gone. He was just 33 years old. He never got to see his daughter. She was born several months after her father's death.