Foreign cinema

Memories of Marina Efimova

Marina Efimova: Pesolini’s film “The Gospel of Matthew” (1964) was shown in Leningrad in the same cinema on Nevsky (in “Artistic”) and only in two evening sessions. The cashier of the cinema told me that there were no tickets, and explained to the whisper that they were distributed among employees of party and Komsomol organizations. Upset, I ran to the street. Rubinstein to his friends and Gale Raines cry in a vest. They sat in a communal kitchen with a neighbor - a quiet and hidden girl Natasha Grigorieva - an artist. Eugene already knew about the situation with tickets, but said that no acquaintances worked. And then quiet Natasha, suddenly, said: "Maybe I can help." Further, the Operation Pazolini developed like this: the next morning I went to the cinema and took ten tickets to some kind of children's matinee. Of these, Natasha managed to make eight impeccable tickets for two evening sessions of the same day - four for each. Igor and I walked in the same team with the Rhines. The crowd fell such that our tickets were skipped without a picky examination - maybe because Natasha was such a skilled counterfeiter, or maybe not to detain an important audience. Once inside, we decided not to try to get a job in the stalls in order to avoid the scandal, and immediately went to the balcony, climbed the last row and sat right on the steps of the stairs. The hall was packed with a bit, but, fortunately, the party inhabitants of the last rows of the balcony were good -natured, no one reported to us, and when the light went out, we breathed freely.

The first long frames of the film went - the legs in dusty sandals, their hasty steps, the floors of the Hiton throw white desert stones, sound - only rapid breathing. Anxiety, anxiety in these frames and breathtaking beauty. And then music began to sound - the "International", no more, no less. The sound grew up, the anthem thundered - in a mighty symphonic performance. The public reaction was instant: one after another, party members began to get out of the hall almost running. Five minutes later, we took luxurious places in the front row of the balcony. We had previously guessed that the hymns were sore, but we did not expect such idiosyncrazes to many functionaries. The Bible also did not inspire them, so the session ended in the half -empty hall.

After the collapse of the Soviet regime, many spoke and wrote (who is jokingly, who seriously) that the Soviet Union was destroyed by Hollywood, and that Stalin’s ideological mistake was allowed to Soviet people after the end of the Great Patriotic War to watch Western “trophy” films. My peers (nicknamed the "sixties") in different ways evaluate the impact on them-then children and adolescents-seductive power of foreign films. Most believes that the most strong impression was made by the "sweet life", which appeared before us on the screen with colorful realism. They recall American films with Dina Durbin and Jeanette McDonald, and German - with Marika Rock. Even in comedies with Francal Gaal (in Peter, for example), poor life looked enviously well -fed, clean and comfortable. There was someone’s story about how in the 50s in the camp they showed an American film about the life of an impoverished worker, and the prisoners saw that the beggar was throwing such a large cigarette butt that they only dreamed about-propaganda suddenly worked in the opposite direction. In general, my very first impression of American cinema was about the same. During the Leningrad blockade (closer to the release) in the surviving cinema "Titan", my grandmother and I watched the film "Baghdad Thief". I remember the amazement that I (then the five -year -old blockade), I still did not cause the luxury of the caliph palace - it seemed to me natural for a fairy tale, but the luxury of the bazaar, where a brisk boy stooped a scarlet piece of watermelon and a smoking cake, having time, screaming, dip it into golden, viscous honey.

Many of my peers of a man recall their almost fainting delight from women - the heroines of the first Western films they saw. Some cannot forget Sarah Leander as Maria Stuart, who in the German trophy film "There was a top-top for a scaffold." Others are Jeanette McDonald in the American films "Dangerous Mission" and "Royal Pirates", others - the Militsa of the Koryusv Hollywood "Big Waltz". My husband remembered his teenage feeling that, finally, he saw on the screen of people with whom he "wanted to be near." "In relation to the heroes and heroines of the film" Swinar and Shepherd, "he said," I did not have such feelings. "

I received the first conscious, serious impression of a foreign film by a 15-year-old girl, in my last year in a pioneer camp. Suddenly, in our dining room - with a plank shed with a sheet on the wall - the older group was shown the film by Rene Cleman "At the walls of Malapagi". It was a black and white film of 1949, which is now called "a romantic drama with elements of neorealism." Very briefly - the content: the hero of the actor Jean Gaben, who committed the murder, runs from post -war France and, by coincidence, is in Italy, in the port city where the francs for fake lira are exchanged. He is helped out by a girl of 13 years old named Chikina and her mother - the waitress - actress Iza Miranda. Between Gaben and Miranda - two crippled people - a feverish novel begins. Chikina is jealous, scandalite and out of jealousy gives the police to know that they have a criminal. The police arrange an ambush in the house where lovers should return after a day spent together at sea. They can go to the house, only climbing a long street staircase, and Chikin, covered by repentance and horror from what she had done, writes them a warning - chalk at every step of this staircase, and he waits for them, staggering at the railing. But falls asleep. Miranda and Gaben do not notice the inscriptions and quietly bypass the sleeping scandalist. And we see two pairs of legs, lazily rising along the soundlessly screaming steps - to the tragic interchange.

In this tragedy, I was most shocked by the fact that the heroes of the film were not at all the good people whom we accustomed to love in Soviet cinema. Then we had a soul for the killer; For a rude, not painful strict behavior, a waitress and for a harmful street girl. It turned out that such imperfect people can also be loved. We whispered: "Well, please look at the steps! .. Chikina, wake up!" From the film "At the walls of Malapagi", my idea of real human relations began to change and yet - the dramatic effect in art: one only noble impulse of the sinful man touched the heart incomparably stronger than the constant impeccability of Soviet "positive heroes." From this film, my cinematic taste began to grow up. I never reviewed "at the walls of Malapagi", but recently I read that in 1950 the picture received a prize in Cannes and Oscars for the best foreign film.

By the way, we received another lesson in using moderate means to achieve a strong dramatic effect in the 1963 film by the same director Rene Cleeman Day and Hour - with Simona Signor and American actor Stuart Whitman. In the French, occupied by the Germans, the desperate aristocrat helps the miracle of the saved American pilot to get out of the country. There is one wonderful scene - in a curser -stuffed suburban train, in which a couple is fleeing from the detective. At the entrance to the next Simon and Whitman station, in a terrible cramp, they make their way through the wagon under the grunts and the shouts of embittered and tired passengers, until these passengers notice that the third, the mission of which is easy to guess about a hasty couple. On the approaching platform, German machine gunners with dogs are already visible, with whom the detective, having left, will give a sign. And then the passengers are silent and frowning, without exchanging a word or a sign, they close to the detective. The backs, elbows, bales, bicycles, again wide backs of hard workers and farmers ... and a soaked detective is stuck in this silently rebellious carriage.

What a good luck, the creators of "Italian neorealism" were the local communists, socialists and other critics of capitalism. Otherwise, in the Soviet Union, we would not see films that cut through our generation a window to Europe. The first to appear Rosselini's film "Rome - Open City", shot in 1945 in the footsteps of war and German occupation. When he (in the 47th or in the 48th year) went to the cinemas, my mother, who did not expect such a shocking belief in the cinema, took me with her. And I spent an hour and a half, sitting with my head pressed to my mother’s knees, listening to screams and shooting from the screen and sob of spectators, including my mother. The rest of the neo -realistic Italian films (all created in a decade from 1944 to 1954) we already watched students: "under the sky of Sicily" Pietro Jermy; "There is no world under olives" and "Rome at 11 o’clock" Giuseppe de Santis; "Cycles of bicycles" Vittorio de Siki; "Naples is the city of millionaires" Eduardo de Filippo.

If we talk about topics, then all these films were about a person’s stamina in the face of poverty and injustice; about a hopeless, but desperate struggle with the mafia and all kinds of villainy; about the saving power of love; About childhood, which remains in childhood both in poverty and in war ... Now many young Russians easily compare these films with “good” (in their expression) Soviet films “The same 50s-such as the 1954 Haifets film about the working dystanist-“ Big Family ”(shot, I think, no longer without the influence of neorealism). But even in comparison with such good things. By Soviet paintings, the difference between Italian films was huge for us, there was no falsehood in them. The directors shot their films right in the villages, on the roads (a lot on the roads), we saw Sicily, Rome, Naples. We saw the Italians with their eyes, because the roles in their films were often performed by professional actors, but local residents in 1954. After 30 years, the famous actor Anthony Kuinn, the performer of the role of a gloomy circus, was granted from nostalgic feelings.

- Ah, Mr. Quinn, remember how you and I starred in Fellini? ..

On the Internet, I came across a recent survey conducted by the newspaper "Change" among modern Russian filmmakers - pupils of Soviet and post -Soviet film schools - about their attitude to the films of Italian neorealism. Some of the respondents did not look at all, but began, like Valery Todorovsky, immediately with Fellini, Antonioni and Bergman. Most do not really remember these films and does not assign them any role in the history of cinema. Balabanov writes: "He looked and forgot." Some people recognize their role in the 50s, but does not see them remaining in the annals of cinema. Dmitry Meskhiev openly writes that he did not like Fellini in his youth, and admits that at that time they "only liked themselves, seemed to themselves the most talented and advanced." Only the directors of the previous generation-Mitta and Khutsiev-recall a huge impression that neorealistic films once made on them. But even Mitta writes that in his youth he would have passed by if his friends had not contributed to his insight - "intellectuals, subtle connoisseurs of art."

Meanwhile, neorealism fell into European history as the "Golden Age of Italian Cinema", as a direction from which what was now called "modernism" in cinema. According to Italian critic Augusto Sinati, "this direction created a new world on the screen, the main elements of which were not narrative functions, but aesthetic." The films of Italian neorealism acted on the viewer as a painting, more precisely, as an artistic black and white photograph-secondly by the plot, in the first-the strongest visual impression. Maybe that's why I have been remembered for half a century from these films, even when the plots were almost forgotten: the twisted body of the young groom killed by the mafia in the white dust of the Sicilian road, removed from a height - from the bell tower of the impotent church ... I remember the figure of the exhausted guilt of the woman over the abyss of the broken staircase and her husband, who, standing below, is trying to hold her with helpless words, and Holds with an expression of love that breaks through ordinary concern and transforms his face ... I remember Anna Maniahni, running after the German van, taking away his lover ... However, this frame from the film "Rome-Open City" remembers, he is even placed on the Italian postal stamp.

The influence of Italian neorealism was recognized by many cinema schools-German, Polish, Hungarian, even Indian. Russian in this influence doubts (possibly from a sense of national independence), but in many of the best Russian films - both Soviet times and the current one - this magic, this gaze of neorealism, which noticed the physical and spiritual beauty from the life of dull new buildings, poor villages and people forgotten by God. Remember the picture of 1967 "History of Asi Klyachina" directed by Andrei Konchalovsky (who was so scared by his authenticity of Soviet censors that she was held on the shelf for two decades), remember the films of Mikhail Kalatozov, Sergey Bondarchuk, Peter Todorovsky, Gleb Panfilov, Alexei Herman, Kira Muratova, Ilya Abasilia, Vasilya, Vasilia Shukshin, Pavel Chukhrai and many other wonderful Russian directors.

As a whole of neorealism lasted only 10 years, reducing all the talents of Italy together, which later, from the mid-50s, fled in different directions: Fellini-into one, Antonioni-to the other, Bertolucci-in the third. But, I think, they all came out of neorealism, like all Russian writers "left the Gogol" overcoat ".

In the 50-60s in Leningrad, views of foreign films were often included in the privilege system, especially if the film was of any dubious nature in an ideological or moral sense. These included the painting by Luigi Komenchini in 1960 "All home", in which the action unfolded in 1943 in Italy, which had just emerged from the war and immediately occupied by the Germans. We fell on her only thanks to our fellow student, whose father was an officer - this time tickets were distributed among officers of military units.

"All home" was the first film we saw in the genre of tragicomedia. And then this bold, seemingly impossible combination shocked us. The scene of the murder by German motorcyclists of two bus passengers: a girl who rushed to run away from them around the open field, and the young man who tried to prevent the Germans to shoot, is one of the most tragic scenes in films about the war. And one of the funniest ones - in which Lea Massari kills the Germans with an iron, saving deserter Alberto Sorty, and Sorty shouts to her: "What good can be expected from a woman who is able to kill a person with an iron!" When the light was lit in the hall, I drew attention to the discouraged faces of the officers who made up most of the public - the film turned out to be pacifist, and the main character was a deserter.

The day when Fellini’s film “Eight and a half” was shown in the Cinema House, my husband remembers as the Day of his shame. This time, tickets were distributed among cultural workers, believing, apparently, that employees of other privileged areas are unlikely to appreciate it. Igor, whose play at that time was considered by the BDT leadership, the theater included in the list of the elect. We guessed that only his name was on the list, but we pretended that we thought that such impolension could not be allowed and that the privileged viewer would miss his wife. Not missed. At the same time, it is quite impolite and arrogant. Then Igor asked me to miss one, but this was not allowed. There was one of the two: either proudly refuse and go home together, or swallow the insult and at least watch the new masterpiece of Fellini. I persuaded Igor to go. And she herself went into the kindergarten in front of the cinema and shook it quietly from humiliation. The film "Eight and a half" was never shown in Leningrad on a wide screen, in any case - until 1978, before our departure to emigration.

We tried to perceive such humiliation, and retell them with humor. Evgeny Rhine told one story about his adventure during a visit to Leningrad, director Paetro Paolo Pazolini in the early 70s. I pass it, as I remember:

Pazolini was supposed to perform at the Cinema House after showing his film (in my opinion, “Decameron”, the theme of which caused, of course, additional excitement). The audience crowded at the cinema long before the start of the session, and, in addition to the strengthened outfit of the watchmen, the director of the Cinema House, whom many knew, personally knew - a tall elderly person with an unusually bony face and an ominous smile - I called him “death with a braid” in Leningrad. Женя Рейн с кем-то из приятелей (помнится, что с фотографом Лёвой Поляковым) долго слонялся у Дома кино в надежде как-нибудь прорваться. Они обследовали здание снаружи, и отчаянный Поляков даже попробовал полезть по водосточной трубе, надеясь добраться до балкона, но потерпел неудачу и ушел домой. Женя остался один и тоже почти потерял надежду, когда, вдруг, увидел, что у лестницы Дома кино остановилась сверкающая черная "волга" и из нее не спеша выходит Пазолини. Ни секунды не мешкая, Женя, никогда не страдавший комплексом неполноценности (наоборот, мы шутили, что у него – комплекс полноценности), быстро, но вальяжно подошел к знаменитому режиссеру. Зная о нетрадиционной сексуальной ориентации Пазолини, Рейн нежно приобнял его за плечи и, оживленно жестикулируя, заговорил на смеси русского и рудиментарного английского, иногда выкрикивая "пронто", "скуза" и "ла дольче вита". Фактурная внешность, веселые глаза и артистичность Жени сбила с толку и вахтеров, и самого Пазолини, который за время визита в Советский Союз познакомился с десятками людей и был не в состоянии всех запомнить. Поэтому он приветливо отреагировал на это представление, тоже приобнял Женю, и они вдвоем прошли в кинотеатр мимо "смерти с косой", не осмелившегося ничего предпринять. В фойе к Пазолини бросились настоящие знакомые, и Женя, легко смешавшись с толпой, прошел в зрительный зал. Он даже нашел свободное место – рядом с привилегированным, чья жена не смогла прийти, но решил наградить себя за успех рискованного предприятия и пошел в буфет шикарно выпить коньячку. Там он и был замечен "смертью с косой" и с помощью двух охранников выведен из Дома кино. "Меня сгубило пижонство", – горестно прикрывая глаза, заканчивал рассказ Рейн и добавлял свою непременную концовку к любой истории: "Клянусь, это чистая правда!"

Чтобы иметь возможность смотреть заграничные фильмы, некоторые ленинградцы поступали на московские "Высшие сценарные курсы". Из друзей – Толя Найман. В Ленинграде расцвел новый жанр – пересказ фильмов. Найман делал это блистательно. Летом 1968 года мы с Рейнами жили в Литве – в холмистой, лесной деревеньке Бурблишки, о которой Женя Рейн, оскорбляя вкус сразу Лермонтова и Гёте, написал стихотворение "Горные Бурблишки спят во тьме ночной". В этих-то Бурблишках приехавший из Москвы Найман пересказывал нам на кухне – по кадрам – американский фильм 67-го года режиссера Джуисона "Душной южной ночью".

Актер Сидней Пуатье – элегантный чернокожий следователь с Севера – оказывается проездом в расистском южном городке.Накануне в городке произошло убийство, и проезжий немедленно попадает под подозрение. Его забирает в участок грубый местный полицейский – актер Род Стайгер (тот самый, что играл Наполеона в фильме Сергея Бондарчука "Ватерлоо"). Молодой негр демонстрирует свои способности, и у него оказываются высокопоставленные защитники с Севера, так что остается только отпустить его с миром. Но опытный полицейский-южанин угадывает, что талантливому парнишке хочется самому раскрыть преступление – чтобы утереть нос белым коллегам. Толя очень похоже (через много лет я смогла сверить его пересказ с фильмом) изображал Пуатье – его гордыню, обаяние и элегантность, точно копировал характерное движение актера – в раздумье трогать ладонью жесткий ежик волос. Тут же преобразившись, Толя изображал уязвленного Стайгера, которого, помимо воли, покорил молодой наглец с его куражом, не имеющим шанса на Юге. Старому южанину захотелось дать ему такой шанс.

Мы делали перерыв в этом необычном устном киносеансе, торопливо укладывали детей, которые, пользуясь случаем, требовали в виде взятки лишнюю конфету, и снова в большом возбуждении возвращались в "кинозал" с замызганными стенами и гроздью липучек от мух, свисающих с голой лампочки, – совершенно в духе запущенной квартиры одинокого полицейского из фильма "Душной южной ночью".

В августе того же года в Бурблишках, в домике на отшибе, где жила единственная в деревне красавица и разлучница, мы, дачники, холодея от ужаса, слушали по коротковолновому приемнику сквозь помехи мужской голос, кричавший: "Слышите нас?!.. Кто-нибудь!.. Советские танки вошли в Прагу! На помощь! На помощь!"

Возвращаясь к заграничным фильмам нашей советской молодости: грех жаловаться, если вспомнить, как много мировых шедевров 40–50–60-х годов было нам показано. Мы посмотрели ставший этапным и культовым бельгийский фильм 1955 года "Чайки умирают в гавани"; абсолютно потрясшую нас трагедию "Рокко и его братья" Лукино Висконти; "Путь в высшее общество" режиссера Джека Клэйтона (с Симоной Синьоре и Лоуренсом Харви) – фильм, впервые повернувший наше изумленное внимание к британскому кинематографу; "Земляничную поляну" Бергмана; Феллини, конечно – три его, наверное, все-таки лучших фильма: "Дорога", "Ночи Кабирии" и "Сладкая жизнь"; ранние фильмы Трюффо и Годара; американский фильм 68-го года режиссера Харви "Лев зимой" с Питером О'Тулом и Кэтрин Хепберн... Другое дело, что нас оскорбляла унизительная зависимость от чужого выбора, мы хотели сами выбирать, что нам смотреть. Правда, когда появилась свобода выбора, появилась и свобода снимать и показывать фильмы такого уровня, которого устыдились бы даже советские редакторы и цензоры.

Совершенно особую роль сыграло, по-моему, в нашей советской юности французское кино, причем фильмы 40-х и 50-х годов, то есть, еще до Трюффо и Годара, до "Новой волны". Итальянский неореализм покорял все сердца, а французские фильмы разделили публику эстетически. Одни ломились на фильм "Бабетта идет на войну" и облизывались на Бриджит Бордо (которая, действительно, была свежа и естественна, как полевой цветок – в отличие от Мерилин Монро, превращенной Голливудом во что-то похожее на рекламу парикмахерской). Другие зрители – лирики – восхищались Даниэль Дарьё, Николь Курсель, Симоной Синьоре, и шедевром считали фильм 54-го года режиссера Атан-Лара "Красное и черное" по роману Стендаля (в главных ролях Дарьё и Жерар Филипп – принц 50-х). Правда, Марина Влади покорила, кажется, всех, как и сам фильм 56-го года "Колдунья" режиссера Андре Мишеля. А вот на более позднем французском фильме "Мужчина и женщина" Клода Лелуша публика опять разделилась. Лирики таяли от красоты и печали многих дивных кадров фильма – например, одинокого хромого с собакой на фоне ослепительного океана; от музыки Франсиса Ле; от элегантной любви, элегантной одежды, элегантного чувства вины; от двух прекрасных лиц: Анук Эме и Жан-Луи Тринтиньяна. А парикмахер, у которого я делала "укладку", сказал сердито: "Ну и героиню выбрали, прости Господи, – две доски складены. Тьфу!". Это об Анук Эме!..

В моей жизни довольно важную роль сыграли французские кинокомедии 50-х, особенно два фильма Кристиана Жака – "Закон есть закон" с Тото и Фернанделем и "Фанфан Тюльпан" – может быть, самая элегантная и остроумная кинокомедия из всех, мною виденных. Там блистало целое созвездие французских актеров, а героем был Жерар Филипп, оказавшийся к нашему восторгу неподражаемым комиком. Меня изумляло то, что и мне, и моим друзьям оказался близок французский юмор. Мы воспринимали его с такой легкостью и с таким наслаждением, словно на нем выросли. Кстати сказать, в "Википедии", в описании всех (уже классических теперь) французских фильмов указаны российские актеры, делавшие дубляж, и это справедливо – Зиновий Гердт, например, читавший текст к фильму "Фанфан-Тюльпан", создал маленький актерский шедевр. Я даже помню наизусть текст его вступления, идущего на соответствующих сатирических кадрах: "Была такая прекрасная страна, которая называлась Франция. Женщины в ней были легкомысленны, а мужчины предавались своему любимому занятию – войне! Солдаты грациозно умирали, изящно вспарывали друг другу животы, и когда количество убитых превысило число оставшихся в живых, по прекрасным дорогам Франции отправились вербовщики".

Году в 90-м в университете штата Юта профессор французского языка подарила мне диск с фильмом "Фанфан-Тюльпан" без титров. Я обнаружила, что они мне не нужны – я до сих пор помню почти весь текст. (Героине – простой девушке, посмевшей ударить короля, мадам Помпадур говорит: "Как?! Пощечина королю?! Мечта всей моей жизни").

Французские фильмы в середине и конце 50-х годов, когда мы только-только опомнились от страшного морока сталинизма, неожиданно напомнили нам, что мы – все еще европейцы, во что бы нас ни пытались превратить пропагандисты прямолинейного, идеологического, политизированного, непременно понятного всем, какого-то специально советского искусства.

Кино моей молодости было, действительно, искусством массовым – не потому, что оно было всем доступно, а потому, что воспринималось "вмногиром" – в переполненных залах кинотеатров. Это было совершенно другое ощущение, чем когда сидишь один перед телевизором и смотришь кино наедине с самим собой. Это так необходимо, хоть иногда – смеяться и плакать вместе с другими. Иосиф Бродский выразил это ощущение одной строфой в "Сонетах к Марии Стюарт":

"...Мы вышли все на свет из кинозала,

но нечто нас в час сумерек зовет

назад в "Спартак", в чьей плюшевой утробе

приятнее, чем вечером в Европе.

Там снимки звёзд, там главная – брюнет,

там две картины, очередь на обе.

И лишнего билета нет".