Tatyana Lioznova with Vyacheslav Tikhonov. The director literally took away her right to film a series based on the novel “Seventeen Moments of Spring” from Lenfilm! Photo: Max ALPERT/RIA Novosti
On July 20 of this year, Tatyana Lioznova could have turned 100 years old. This petite woman “built” the most famous artists on the set. No wonder she was called “iron lady”, “baby woman”. And… “a spinster of Soviet cinema”. After all, Lioznova was never married and considered the films she made to be her children.
Although men loved her. And what a guy!
“I had a lot of novels,” Tatyana Mikhailovna admitted in her later years to Komsomolskaya Pravda. “Novels are charming, they give strength for work…”
legendary poet
In 1949, Lioznova graduated from VGIK. She was assigned to the M. Gorky film studio. But they were soon dismissed. There was a campaign in the country to “fight against rootless cosmopolitanism.” The girl from a Jewish family was not suitable for the court. Tatyana got a job at Literaturnaya Gazeta. Here the editor-in-chief Konstantin Simonov became interested in her. A poet, a front-line soldier, who has already received six Stalin Prizes. What girl would not feel dizzy! Although he is nine years older and is married for the third time to the popular actress Valentina Serova.
Poet and writer Konstantin Simonov. Photo: Alexander LESS/TASS
One day Tatyana was late for work. Her mother met her at the entrance. A car pulled up and the daughter got out with a man. The girl smelled of champagne. At home, Ida Izrailevna beat her daughter. “Mom, it was Simonov himself who took me!” she tried to justify herself. But her stern mother forbade her to meet the boss. “Well, I thought: where am I and where is Simonov?” Tatyana Mikhailovna later said. And she quit Literaturnaya Gazeta.
Her father joined the militia at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War and disappeared in December 1941. Ida Izrailevna raised her daughter alone and remained her main authority until the end of her days.
Two-time Oscar nominee
Later, Lioznova was reinstated at the Gorky Film Studio. In 1954, she was appointed second director of Stanislav Rostotsky’s first film, “Land and People”.
Over the weekend, the film crew went out into the woods to have a barbecue. It got dark.
“Stasik steps to the edge of the clearing and disappears, only the crackling of branches can be heard,” recalls Lioznova. – I ran there. And I saw a grandiose scene. There was a deep hole covered with burdocks and bushes. Everything was dented, the depth was enormous. I looked in and Rostotsky was standing, only his beret had slipped to one side and he had a cigarette stuck to his lip. Without moving his lips, he said: “It seems that he is alive.” How we pulled him out of there, how we laughed when it was all over!
Directed by Stanislav Rostotsky. Photo: Lev IVANOV/RIA Novosti
It was then that love broke out between them. One of the “well-wishers” reported the affair to Rostotsky’s wife, actress Nina Menshikova. She complained to the studio management. Moral character in the USSR was strictly controlled. The culprit of family discord was called in for conversation. It was here that Tatyana showed her character. “Was she with you?” – she turned to one of the guardians of morality. “No.” “What about you?” – asked another. “No.” – “So why do you think she was with Rostotsky?” The storm has passed.
In 1956, the film “The Land and the People” became one of the leaders of the Soviet box office. The lovers remained friends. Rostotsky became famous: his paintings “…And the Dawns Here Are Quiet”, “White Bim Black Ear” were nominated for an Oscar. These same films, plus “We’ll Live Until Monday”, were recognized in the USSR as the best films of the year. Stanislav Iosifovich received the country’s highest Lenin Prize and two USSR State Prizes.
The best helicopter pilot on the planet.
In 1963, Lioznova made the feature film They Conquer the Sky, dedicated to deceased test pilots, for which she received the first Golden Wing award at the International Aeronautical and Space Film Festival in Deauville (France). Among the film’s advisors was Vasily Koloshenko, an honored test pilot of the USSR, a Hero of the Soviet Union. He holds 15 world records in helicopters. He flew over the South and North Poles, extinguished forest fires in France, and saved people in the mountains of India. He was the prototype of the main character in the film If You Want to Be Happy, played by Nikolai Gubenko.
Test pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union Vasily Koloshenko.
Photo: ru.wikipedia.org.
Vasily Petrovich became Lioznova’s new lover. They were united by their love for the sky. After all, after school, Tatyana entered the Moscow Aviation Institute. But after studying for the first semester, I took the documents. I realized that building airplanes is not for her. It is better to “build” artists. But the love for the sky remained. It is no coincidence that the impetus for Tatyana Mikhailovna’s first cinematic masterpiece in 1967, “Three Poplars on Plyushchikha”, was Alexandra Pakhmutova’s song about pilots, “The Earth is empty without you”. After hearing it performed by Maya Kristalinskaya, the surprised Lioznova began to look for a suitable plot about female love. She found it in the story “Three Poplars on Shabolovka” by Alexander Borshchagovsky. And she made the famous film with Tatyana Doronina and Oleg Efremov, slightly changing the title. Shabolovka was then firmly associated with television.
For Koloshenko, the earth was empty when, returning home after the most difficult tests of the Mi 12 helicopter, he learned that his wife had died. The children were left in his arms. Lioznova’s love became the pilot’s salvation. Tatyana Mikhailovna even “adopted” the orphan Lyudmila Koloshenko. Introduced her to her friends: “Lyudusya, my daughter.” She called her mommy. “Every time I accompanied my dad to the tests with anxiety,” my daughter recalled. – Will he come back? Sometimes the helicopters he was testing disappeared from all radars. When mom appeared, she began to share this eternal concern of mine. And at such moments she infected me with her optimism: “Ludus, so what? Any news from heaven?” If she herself immersed herself in a new script or shooting, she also disappeared “from all radars” for a while.
Ida Izrailevna, who was very careful about the choice of suitors for her daughter, always greeted Koloshenko warmly: “I think Vasya is one of the best!” “No, he is the best, he is just very modest,” the Lioznovs joked, embarrassing the guest.
But family life did not work out for the pilot either. “They stayed like this, each in his own space,” said Lyudmila Koloshenko.
Chief Ostap Bender
After the success of The Three Poplars on Plyushchikha, Lioznova decided to film the novel Seventeen Moments of Spring by Yulian Semenov, published in 1969 in the magazine Moscow. But the writer told her that he had already written a script for a two-part film about Stirlitz and sold it to Lenfilm. In exchange, she offered the script “Diamonds for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” about the adventures of the young intelligence officer Isaev, who had not yet become Stirlitz.
Here the “Iron Lady” showed her character to the full: “I was not at a loss and I was passionate and told him that I didn’t care if the script was sold or not, but I would direct this film! And that’s it. And then Julian did something real, something he didn’t do often: he sent a telegram to the chairman of the Television Committee, in which he said that he was withdrawing the script from Lenfilm and handing it over to me. He sent the money he received for the script by wire transfer to Leningrad.”
The search for an actor for the main role took a long time. At that time, Lioznova was having a whirlwind romance with actor Archil Gomiashvili, who played Ostap Bender in Leonid Gaidai’s comedy “12 Chairs”.
Archila Gomiashvili glorified the role of Ostap Bender in Leonid Gaidai’s comedy “12 Chairs”. And the artist really wanted to become Stirlitz! Photo: Still from the film.
He met Lioznova at an actors’ party. I just divorced my third wife, Tatyana Okunevskaya. He looked after me wonderfully. Showered me with gifts. Promised to marry. And he persistently sought the role of Stirlitz. Once Archil arranged a banquet for the film crew in a fashionable restaurant. When they were returning in the car, Yulian Semenov said with a sigh: “Where can we find this unfortunate Stirlitz? – and suddenly made a dramatic gesture with his hand towards Gomiashvili: “Yes, here he is!” Lioznova burst into laughter: “How I presented this Bender in the role of a Russian intelligence officer!” Moreover, the scene, in her opinion, was poorly staged. Archil took offense, broke up with Lioznova, left for Georgia and quickly married a 17-year-old ballerina.
The story continued. “One day I got on a plane to fly to Tbilisi,” Gomiashvili said. – I see: Tatyana Lioznova and the entire film crew will also fly to Tbilisi to show the film on the same plane. On the plane, my two-year-old Ninochka started running, rushed up and sat on Lioznova’s lap. I went to pick up my daughter, took her and said to Tanya: “You see, the story has decided itself: you are carrying metal cans with a film, and I am carrying this little man.”
Apparently, he wanted to hurt his ex-lover.
Academician, Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR
Lioznova’s last notable passion was Vladimir Kirillin. A prominent energy scientist, physicist, academician, vice-president of the USSR Academy of Sciences. For 15 years he was Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Alexei Kosygin. Lenin Prize laureate, four Orders of Lenin, other awards.
Academician Vladimir Kirillin. Photo: Vasili MALYSHEV/RIA Novosti
He was 11 years older than Tatyana Mikhailovna. He was a widower. It seemed that nothing prevented them from starting a family. But again it didn’t work out.
Lioznova invited her lover to the Moscow Art Theatre to watch Oleg Efremov’s sensational play “We, the Undersigned.” She was going to film this touching drama.
Kirillin didn’t like the performance. “You’ll be in big trouble. Stop filming before it’s too late,” she persuaded. “It was easier for me to give up Kirillin,” the “iron lady” admitted. And so we parted ways.
In 1981, a two-part television film was released. It received the first prize at the All-Union Television Festival in Yerevan. “We, the undersigned,” is a picture that not everyone understands and accepts today, said Tatyana Mikhailovna after the collapse of the USSR. – Although this picture is very dear to me, it is full of tenderness and love for my people. I have personally seen viewers who look at it and laugh, and at the end they start crying. That is what the whole structure of the picture is designed for.”
In 1981, Carnival was released. According to the director, it is her “most personal” film. “This is my relationship with my mother. Her attraction to her father and the way they love each other.”
In 1987, his three-part television film The End of the World Followed by a Symposium was released, based on the play of the same name by American playwright Arthur Kopit. Despite the star cast, the film was shown on our television only once. The film was anti-American, about the dangers of war. And Gorbachev, and then Yeltsin, moved towards rapprochement with the United States. Although at the cost of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The legendary director did not make any more films. “Times have changed too much. Now I don’t understand many things at all, I can’t be the “ruler of thoughts”. I feel that my great country has lost what was loved, feared and respected. And it really hurts me.”
Tatyana Mikhailovna died in September 2011. Out of a long-standing habit of keeping everything under control, she indicated in her will what inscription should be made on her tombstone: “People’s Artist of the USSR, film director Tatyana Lioznova.” She was buried at the Donskoye Cemetery in the capital, next to her mother.
5 of the director’s most famous films
“They conquer the sky” (1963)
“Three poplars on Plyushchikha” (1967)
“Seventeen Moments of Spring” (1973)
“We the undersigned” (1980)
“Carnival” (1981)
QUESTION – RIB
Why did he never marry?
“Everything revolves around Tatyana Mikhailovna’s character,” says her close friend, film critic Vyacheslav Shmyrov. – When her first love passed and her life together began, she clearly understood that all men were too small for her. She was looking for her equal, but in her entire life she could not find one. The romance with Kirillin was the last in Lioznova’s life. In the remaining years, she entered into exclusively friendly relations. And, as close people say, she was never worried about the absence of a real family. She met ideal men twice. Sergey Gerasimov is the teacher of her course at VGIK. And Oleg Nikolaevich Efremov. I will say right away that there were no novels. She understood perfectly: one does not live with “icons”.
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