90 years since the birth of actor and director Mikhail Kozakov
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS.
BECOMES MIKHAIL MIKHAILOVICH THANKS TO ZOSCHENKO
Mikhail Kozakov was born into a very good family and was the son of people who had suffered a lot of pain.
His father, Mikhail Emmanuilovich Kozakov, was a writer, the author of several plays, short stories and the epic novel “Nine Points” (“The Collapse of the Empire”); the plays were banned (one of them by Stalin’s personal order), his colleagues enthusiastically harassed him, the novel was published in full only after his death (and today, let’s be honest, everyone forgets about it). Adding to his problems was diabetes, which he suffered from since his youth and which, at the age of 57, took him to the grave.
Mikhail Mikhailovich’s mother, Zoya Nikitina, survived two arrests (in the 30s she was accused of working for British intelligence, in the 40s – of financial irregularities, both nonsense). The son recalled that she “always worked…She left her husbands and, taking the children, went to the next, proudly rejecting material help.” And family friend Evgeniy Schwartz wrote: “She was considered a beautiful woman, with a rich figure, small head, straight hair, huge eyes, dark in an oriental style. Zoe was of Greek descent and inherited the frenetic energy of her tribe. The voice is low. Hoarse. Mental health is like a steamroller… As if responding to her indestructible vitality, fate began to hit her with mechanical tenacity. At the end of the war, one of his sons died. The second, already in peacetime, died from an accidental shot from a captured pistol. A schoolboy, a classmate, took a gun from his father, swung it around, swung it around and killed a tall, serious, intelligent boy. He has one son left, by Misha Kozakov. Misha too.”
Young Kozakov spent his childhood and youth communicating with the titans. With Zoshchenko (in 1934, parents doubted that the name Mikhail Mikhailovich was suitable for their son, but they remembered that the name Zoshchenko was exactly that and settled on this option). With Akhmatova. With the prominent literary critic Boris Eikhenbaum. With Schwartz himself, “fat and cheerful uncle Zhenya”, who, in the presence of thirteen-year-old Misha, read “An Ordinary Miracle” for the first time. With Boris Pasternak (read “August”).
Compared to his father and mother, Misha seemed like a favorite of fate (and he wrote: “without any irony, I consider myself, basically and most importantly, a happy person”). At the age of 18 he easily entered the Moscow Art Theater School-Studio, having passed a competition of 75 people per place, at the age of 21 he played the main role in the film of the living classic Mikhail Romm “Murder in Dante.” Street” and instantly became a movie star, at the age of 22 he received the role of Hamlet in the performance of the legendary Nikolai Okhlopkov; Well, we don’t need to remind you of the fantastic career of the actor and director. And at the same time, his autobiographical books are full of torment and self-criticism: it begins with a confession of “natural complexities, natural shyness, which all my life I have had to hide under the mask of an actor, a terrible fear of finally revealing my stupidity.” and little knowledge in the field of culture…”
Still from the film Murder on Dante Street.
DAL DREAMED OF TRANSFORMING THE “NAMELESS STAR” INTO A KAFKAN NIGHTMARE
Interestingly, Kozakov’s most famous film roles are supporting roles. Among them are the brilliantly played “idiot roles that, I must admit, I love,” in “Hello, I’m Your Aunt!” and “Straw Hat.” The villain Zurita in “The Amphibian Man”, with whom, despite his demonstrative deception, half of the women in the country were in love. Physicist in the outstanding work “Nine Days of a Year” by Romm, Biron in “Demidovs”. There were also passing roles, for example, Dzerzhinsky, whom he sometimes played “not without pleasure”, as in the film “December 20”, but more often without much joy. And the roles he couldn’t stand: “It had to happen that I acted in “Walking Through Torment” twice (!), in two film versions! Both versions are shit! And I’m the shit there! Or better yet, as Ranevskaya taught, it’s bullshit!
Still from the movie “Hello, I’m your aunt.”
He was also an excellent film director; However, most of his works (“If you believe in Lopotukhin”, “The shadow or “Maybe everything will turn out well””, “The four-handed dinner”, “The charm of evil”) went unnoticed behind the brilliance of his Top hits: “Nameless Star” and “Pokrovsky Gate.”
Mikhail Kozakov in the film “The Amphibian Man”
For many years he dreamed of producing “The Nameless Star” for television, based on the work of Mikhail Sebastian. In the late 60s, teleplays were broadcast on television once or twice, and then they were erased from the video tape “due to their scarcity” (this is how Kozakov’s play “Blow of the Horn” with Oleg Dahl perished) . This did not bother Mikhail Mikhailovich; In 1970 he was going to stage “The Nameless Star” with Dahl himself and Anastasia Vertinskaya. But the project failed and Kozakov returned to it only eight years later. Fortunately, this time I was shooting on film.
Vertinskaya remained the performer of the role of Mona, but problems arose with Dahl. He still liked the work and the role of maestro Marin Miroi, but Dahl dreamed of “making this transparent story something like Kafka’s The Trial.” Dahl suggested the residents of the city where Miroi lives, but it seems that the capital’s trains pass through their station. The roads have been covered with grass for a long time. The teacher sees the star he discovered and it really shines in the night sky, but for some reason no one on Earth can see it. Throughout the story, Oleg suggested that the teacher commit suicide, also in the Kafkaesque spirit. Something like a professor lying on the tracks, barely visible under the grass, and being killed by a train that, plowing the grass and the earth, passes at a terrible speed…
Mikhail Kozakov and Anastasia Vertinskaya in the film “The Nameless Star”
I remember that I told him then: “Oleg, when I want to put Kafka on stage, I will put Kafka on stage, if you allow me, but for now I am putting on a concrete and modest comedy by Mikhail Sebastian that I liked and I invite you to play the role. main role. He withered, he shrank, his gaze turned inward, he clearly lost interest in the topic of the conversation and my vision of the work.”
Unfortunately, in eight years Dahl has changed a lot: he has become much darker. He had a couple of years to live. “He realized his talent just a third of his great human and acting abilities. Having known him closely, I affirm it with all the pain and bitterness, I affirm it with annoyance – damn it! – which erupted as the first emotion when I suddenly learned in Leningrad of his ridiculous death.”
Miroya was played by Igor Kostolevsky and Kozakov was going to invite Leonid Filatov to play the role of Grig. But Georgy Rerberg, a cameraman considered a genius and famous for his complex character, rebelled against him: “He doesn’t have a movie face!” (!!!) As a result, Kozakov played Grieg himself and quarreled to the death with Rerberg (he even removed his last name from the credits).
“JEWISH DANCES AROUND THE PUSHKIN MONUMENT”
But all these problems seemed trivial when Kozakov took on “Pokrovsky Gates,” a film that initially didn’t please anyone. Georgy Danelia tried in a friendly way to dissuade Kozakov from putting it on stage because “the script was not successful.” Sofya Pilyavskaya, although she helped “overcome” the production, said until the end of her days: “Misha Kozakov hung on me like a weight so that I would play this aunt! I agreed for business reasons. I don’t like “Pokrovskie Vorota” because I think you shouldn’t try to pour half a liter into a glass. And Misha mixed it all up there.” Nikita Mikhalkov refused to play Savva Ignatievich. Elena Koreneva also refused the role of Lyudochka: “Operetta, and that’s it!”
It was believed that the director discredited the image of the Soviet soldier of the film’s hero Savva Ignatich.
Photo: still from the film.
When the movie was finally filmed, his bosses began to scold him. Chief television director Sergei Lapin called the “Pokrovsky Gate” a “disgusting image”: “You have discredited the image of the Soviet warrior! (That is, Savva Ignatievich. – Ed.). These movies are made by people fleeing to Israel or the United States! And a film playwright, whose name Kozakov does not mention in his memoirs, added: “What to discuss? Jewish dances around the monument to Pushkin…” “Pokrovskie Vorota” was miraculously broadcast, according to legend, only because Andropov, in a conversation with Lapin, complained that few comedies appeared on the air, and the “frying pan” was , however, urgently put on the program.
Still from the film “Pokrovsky Gate”
Koreneva later recalled: “It turned out that all of us, the actors, were very wrong, and Michal Mikhalych’s insight and creative intuition are now perceived even more obviously. Although… And he watched the film’s decades-long success with obvious curiosity: What’s really so good? But not to the same extent?! Perhaps that is why Tanya Dogileva and I made an unforgivable mistake, vandalism, when, during the premiere at the Casa del Cine, we decided to immediately go to a restaurant to “celebrate” and not go on stage to present the film with the film crew. . . We made this decision spontaneously, after the adrenaline of the premiere. Michal Mikhalych’s bewilderment and the anger that he later expressed were perceived by us as something temporary: think, this is Michal Mikhalych, he will forgive everything!
LISTEN TOO
“Mother Earth, white birch” Tatyana Kurtukova spoke directly about the competition with SHAMAN (more details)
