Lyubov Paykova. Preliminary obituary

Preliminary obituary
Renata Litvina's film won the Laurel Branch prize

Lyubov Paykova

Publication date: December 4, 2000

The Non-Fiction Film and Television Guild presented its first prizes on Saturday. The “laurel branch” in the category “Best Documentary Film” went to the film “No Death for Me” by Renata Litvinova .

Litvinova made her first documentary about five wonderful female actors: Lydia Smirnova , Tatyana Okunevskaya , Vera Vasilyeva , Tatyana Samoilova and Nonna Mordyukova . About everyone's favorites, people's artists, stars and all that stuff.

Before filming, they were dressed, laid out, dressed up. Somehow this strange, in some sense even shocking makeup, these mink capes taken out of the chest of drawers for such a unique occasion, brightly painted nails and carefully styled hair, all this festivity and solemnity hinted at the “last preparation”. What if you imagine: this is indeed their last interview. There is nothing more to hide, and there is no need, and I want to confess my secret, say the main words out loud, tell hidden thoughts, and perhaps draw the last disappointing conclusions.

Perhaps, Litvinova prepared them for this, and dressed them up for this. To the "last rites" of the unexpected truth about yourself. She understood her heroines, almost in a family way, as older friends or even mentors. They turned out to be her sisters in a bygone era, in female passion, in the uniqueness of feeling. And they responded eagerly. Forgetting what the people are and what the stars are. Pain, it’s pain in Africa too, it doesn’t care about awards and titles.

Litvinova lovingly tied the threads of the tattered plots of five stories into a single dramatic knot. The plots turned out to be painfully similar.

Litvinova appeared as a “solver” of unimaginable secrets and complex vicissitudes of an intimate nature. At the same time, she herself, in the role of a commentator on what was happening, surprisingly logically fit into this star quintet, showing herself not so much as a grateful listener and student, but as one to whom the baton is being passed on as an equal. Litvinova tried on a seemingly episodic, but in fact one of the main roles - the tempter of her own chosen “objects”. And their lives turned out to be literally filled with secrets. In this role, Litvinova demonstrated impeccable feminine style, the charm of “class,” everything that was desired, attractive and loved at all times. What did she manage to discover?

Lydia Smirnova loved one person, but married a completely different person. She had an abortion - her career at that time seemed to her to be much more important - but she could no longer have children. Today - one like a finger. Vera Vasilyeva hid from life in the armor of a successful marriage in order to avoid passions, temptations, and “storms and stresses.” She so wanted peace and balance! Today, summing up, she proudly says that she has never cheated on her husband! But behind this pride one can read rather bitterness and dissatisfaction. Vasilyeva chose the correct scheme over real life, played her game like a skilled but dispassionate grandmaster, smoothly, win-win, “to a draw.” Like Smirnova, she did not have children (or did she not want to burden herself with them?).

Tatyana Okunevskaya did not hide from anyone or anything, lived freely, mixed with foreigners, fell in love with enemy ambassadors, favorably accepted the advances of Tito, whom Stalin hated, and did not at all want to keep her mouth shut! She was a famous Moscow beauty, not only an actress, but she did not avoid a head-on collision with Beria himself. And it cost her six years in the camps. But the camp did not embitter her, did not break her, and this is the only woman who, having soberly assessed her capabilities, was able to say that the profession in her life was not a panacea at all. As a result, she was able to be grateful to fate even for sitting, because it was the camp that made her who she is today. Okunevskaya “prepared” for old age better than others. People who went through the camp generally turned out to be more “long-lived” or something. Her self-discipline, vegetarianism, and passion for yoga had an impact here. The most important thing about Okunevskaya is that she always followed the call of her own, “intimate,” and not “general,” “collective,” to which she remained alien throughout her long biography.

Tatyana Samoilova also paid dearly for the only triumph of her life - the film “The Cranes Are Flying.” I had to pay for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival with loneliness and illness. She gave birth very late, from a man who was much younger than her. She idolized her son, but he went to America and got married there. Samoilova has not seen him for five years - there is no money for a ticket. There is pain and resentment in my soul, including towards my son. She has not been invited to act in film for almost 20 years. Life quickly flashed by, and it still seems to her that she stood on the Cannes stairs just yesterday.

Nonna Mordyukova is the central character of Litvinov’s interview. Even today she is strong, beautiful, stately, inquisitive. You can feel the dignity of a people's artist in her, who owes everything in life exclusively to herself. Having played the role of social heroines all her life, today she is throwing off this burden with sad grandeur - “women with a jackhammer”, “sleeper layer”, “chairwoman of the collective farm”. Soviet stereotypes have collapsed: asexuality and disinterestedness are no longer considered valor. But what to do if in life she remains unmercenary, has not accumulated anything, has not made money. She's not some Liz Taylor! Mordyukova remembers her first love - Slava Tikhonov, who was the father of her son, who died tragically several years ago. She would so much like to return to the past and do “work on mistakes”, learn to give in in some ways, and be gentler in others. Mordyukova talks about Yuri Kramorny, who loved her, who was fifteen years younger. This age difference scared her. Today she understands: the age difference is nonsense.

Renata Litvinova made her film in the genre of a “preliminary” obituary, in the genre of a requiem for the living. The monologues of the actresses seem to be motley, mosaic, and sometimes incoherent. At the same time, the film is edited in such a way that everything adds up to a coherent picture. A “result” is presented, from which it is easy to reconstruct everything that preceded it. Death has always been Litvinova's obsession, the central theme of all her scripts, including those she wrote to Kira Muratova. But Litvinova is not a pathologist at all. She talks about the living, which is why her film turned out to be unexpectedly passionate. With her film she proved that her heroines are not as ready for death as they want to live. None of them even had a note of fatigue or defeat in their voices; they still dream of men and are waiting for something that could change the course of their lives. All five heroines entrusted Litvinova with something that they would not have entrusted to any other interviewer. For them, she turned out to be theirs because of the secret that she also has, because of her independence of judgment, because of her sincere interest in them, because of her ability to concentrate on the main thing, not for herself, but for them. But this became the main thing for her. That’s why they weren’t afraid to reveal their women’s secrets to her. Perhaps Renata hinted to them something very important: death sometimes runs faster than life?..

Renata Litvinova's film told more about Smirnova, Samoilova, Okunevskaya, Vasilyeva, Mordyukova than volumes of books and articles. It became a fusion of two genres: intimate lyrical confession and mournful, almost “cemetery” lament. Surprisingly, in the counterpoint of these two voices, the predominant voice was the voice of life, not death.