"A gloomy young man who will make comedies"
While working on a scene in which the main character is thrown over a fence into the street, actor Oleg Borisov decided to see how it would all play out in the shot.
– It’s very simple, – the director got excited. – These guys grab you by the arms and legs and throw you around… “These guys are well chosen. They can throw you anywhere!”, – Borisov assessed them and warned:
– There are cobblestones there. You could seriously get hurt.
“Nothing,” the director replied calmly. “You’ll just flip in the air like a cat, and that’s it…”
“Show me!” Borisov picked up on his enthusiasm.
“Well, take me,” the director, who was seriously upset, ordered the extras, “throw me!”
The wish was granted, and after flying over the fence, the director landed on the pavement. He landed in the wrong place as he had planned…
The talent of Viktor Ivanov, a graduate of Moscow's VGIK (All-Union State Institute of Cinematography), was spotted by his teacher and world-famous director, the author of the legendary "Battleship Potemkin", Sergei Eisenstein. He told his students: "This serious, gloomy young man will probably make comedies."
Viktor Mykhailovych Ivanov
Eisenstein was not mistaken, but the first comedy by Kozyatyn native Ivanov was still a long way off, and in the meantime there was war… injuries… participation in the liberation of Kyiv. There was no time for comedies, although even about those times Viktor Mikhailovich later joked, recalling how he climbed onto the roof of the Dovzhenko film studio with a machine gun and “watered” the enemies from there.
"Psyche without separation from production"
After the end of the war, difficult times began. Ivanov could not find a job: the Kiev studio (the same one where the main masterpiece of the director's career would appear in a decade and a half) did not accept him, saying, "there are enough assistants without you." Allied wanderings began: Moscow, Sverdlovsk, Vilnius, Kaunas. Working as an art director at local film studios, shooting newsreels, Ivanov did not stay anywhere for long.
As a result, he returned to Kyiv in the 1950s. His friend Oleksandr Dovzhenko found a place for Ivanov in the walls of the film studio, and it was here that the 47-year-old director released his first film: a short film-concert “The Adventures of Tarapunka’s Jacket”. Then Viktor Mykhailovych released classic works of Ukrainian cinema: “Shelmenko the Detective”, “One Hundred Thousand”, “Olexa Dovbush”.
It was not possible to hide Soviet high-rise buildings everywhere.
Under the guise of a hot topic about dudes and asking permission to film in offices, Ivanov begins working on his most successful… No, not really. Rather, the most famous, most popular, but this film, oddly enough, did not bring much success to the director. Moreover, as his son Mikhail later told us, after the release of “Hare” his father was deprived of the right to film for the next four years. “He once told me: “I have no joy in life.” That was what the comedian said!” While the main actors of the comedy Borisov and Krynitsyna were talked about and written about (although after filming with Ivanov, their careers did not go up either), Viktor Mikhailovich remained somewhat aloof from this.
"You see that man's feet were given to him to strike the ground with, that's why they grow from the head."
So, in 1961, the Ukrainian SSR (yes, at first only we, and then the “brotherly” nations became interested in cinema) saw the legendary film “After Two Hares”. The film, which became the peak of creativity for most of the people involved in it, the film in which Viktor Ivanov invested so much, and at the same time the film whose potential, as the director’s family claims, was far from being fully revealed. Ivanov himself, during his lifetime, spoke about how his film was cut, was not allowed to be completed, and complained about the lack of funds. Perhaps this is why he often lost his temper with his charges, as a result of which he received the humorous nickname “a psycho who is constantly on the set”. “My father always said that he wanted to shoot the whole film a little differently, but his ideas lacked the funds allocated for the film. If they had not been lacking, we would have seen a completely different film,” Mykhailo Ivanov shares his thoughts.
Rabbit remixes
"Chasing Two Hares" is a screen version of a play by one of the luminaries of Ukrainian theater, Mykhailo Petrovych Starytsky. But this "hare chain" began even earlier, and was started by Ivan Semenovich Nechuy-Levytsky, who in 1875 wrote the "bourgeois comedy" "On the Leather Coats". The play, as they say, "didn't work", and therefore Mykhailo Petrovych took up its "remix", who, adding the last bit of intrigue and dynamism, "brought" "Hare" to the masses. True, the name of the comedy on the posters at that time had a slightly different look: "A Gentleman's Lip, but No Teeth", and in brackets they added the familiar to our eyes: "Chasing Two Hares".
Comedy movie poster
The party was, to put it mildly, skeptical about Ivanov's work: "Where is there agriculture here, where is socialism?!" Nevertheless, having given permission for filming, the cabinet figures gave their prediction: "Oh, the Jew, he will still fail the Ukrainian classic!". "...They gave him Starytsky's play to fail. And the "Jew" looked at it in a new way and made a masterpiece. If a Ukrainian had filmed it, it would have been, as always, a household comedy. Instead, it turned out to be a light French comedy without vulgarity. The film was recognized when it was taken to a festival in Argentina. There he received the first prize for the performance of the role of Golokhvastov by Oleg Borisov. They gave him 60 thousand dollars...", recalls Taisiya Litvinenko, the performer of the role of the maid Khimki.
The first to see the film were at the Darnytsia Railwaymen's Club, where the premiere took place on December 21. The film, which was a prototype of M. Starytsky's work, still had its own script, developed in two weeks by Ivanov. And all the phrases that eventually became catchy were also the work of Viktor Mikhailovich.
"Once, even our parrot couldn't stand the arguments. He started bawling at the director's voice. The bird was bought from long-distance sailors, and his vocabulary was appropriate..."
"Viktor Ivanov was very worried about whether the film would turn out well. He had been working on this film for many years of his life. This film was like an exam for the director, so he was extremely nervous and dramatized events, even microscopic failures during filming. In addition, he was an extremely demanding person towards himself and those around him, often unsure of many things, always searching, so it seemed to him that Borisov and I, the actor who played the role of Svyrid Golokhvastov, were doing everything wrong. Once he even wrote a statement addressed to the director of the film studio: "I ask you to remove Borisov and Krynitsyn from the roles. The first one plays like a herring, and I need a pike, the second one - an empty bottle or vessel." Then he cooled down, calmed down, and everyone forgot about the statement. When the film was released, everyone praised it. "No one expected such a huge success," says Margarita Krynitsyna, who played the role of Pronia Prokopivna, who died in Kyiv in 2005.
Monument to Pronia Prokopivna and Golokhvastov
Often broke down, but quickly "went away"
By the way, it was the beautiful Margarita (except for the image of Pronia, she really was a beauty) who got the most "scolding" from the demanding director. It is generally believed that Krynitsyna Ivanova was imposed because she was the wife of the chief editor of the film studio - Yevgeny Onoprienko.
"They said there was a crackling in my chest. But your cigarette was crackling..."
“I was naughty on the set, we often argued with the director. Once even our parrot couldn’t stand his arguments. He got mad at the director’s voice. The bird was bought from long-distance sailors, and his vocabulary was appropriate,” Krynitsyna shares her cheerful memories.
“He often brought her to tears. Rita would run behind the set to cry. He would look for her, find her, apologize, and quickly leave. And she continued to work,” says the film’s cinematographer Vadym Illienko.
"The main thing in a person is not money, but natural health, learning. Therefore, if a person is a learner, then the world turns upside down for him, sorry, upside down. And then when it is white for one, an unlearned person, then for him, a learner, it will be like a motley!"
There were also conflicts with Golokhvastov - Oleg Borisov. In addition to the one we mentioned at the very beginning of the material, which best characterizes the person of Viktor Ivanov, there was a precedent when half of the film had already been shot, and Oleg wrote a statement in which he refused to continue filming in the film. In the end, everything was resolved peacefully.
St. Andrew's Church - the place where the wedding of Pronia and Svyryd never took place
Ivanov's favorite on the set was Khimka (Taisiya Litvinenko). The director said: "You are the only one who satisfies me, because you work in the style of Moliere's theater."
The untapped potential of a great comedian
"I was very young, but I remember some scenes well. I remember Viktor Mikhailovich Ivanov, who was very mobile, effective, and improvised a lot. And then I got the image of the director as an unbridled, half-crazy, half-genius man, and that only in this way can you ignite a group and make everyone work... Well, the fact that Ivanov is still a comedy director, a comedy writer, undoubtedly, and that he lacked comedy scripts in our Ukrainian cinematographic country (for some reason, there are few comedy writers in our country), which is why his fate did not turn out the way it could have turned out. After all, I remember him when I was already working as an actor at Dovzhenko, how he sat on a bench there, near the film processing shop: sad, unhappy, not filming, because they simply did not give him anything...", recalls Oleksandr Denysenko, the son of Natalia Naum (Gali in the comedy).
Natalia Naum – performer of the role of Gali
Everyone who has ever worked with Viktor Mikhailovich Ivanov notes his excellent manners, ability to react to everything with humor, bright style, and wonderful smell of cologne.
Interestingly, the director himself took part in the dubbing of his own film – he spoke in the voice of a parrot that lived in Prony's room and screamed: "Khimka, you fool." Logically, the parrot could have been taught these simple words himself, but Ivanov apparently decided not to pollute the already very specific avian lexicon for the sake of such trifles.
"The young lady has already gone to bed and is asking for it"
Critics (it seems, the same ones who predicted the film's failure even before filming began) called the film the worst in 1961. And even despite the frenzied attention and positive reviews from the public, all this quite noticeably embarrassed the director. Ivanov was methodically pushed out of cinema. Having never shot the planned dozen films, Viktor Mikhailovich suffered two heart attacks, and then died. He died without learning about the State Prize, which his film was awarded forty years after its release. He also died without learning about the Ukrainian, so to speak, original version of "Hare", found three years ago in Mariupol.
Only fifty-two years after its release were the legendary "Hare" destined to sound natural, to sound, in fact, as planned, as conceived and conceived by the brilliant Viktor Mykhailovych Ivanov. "The people did not wait for a technically perfect restoration - they managed it themselves!", - commented on the presentation of the Ukrainian-language version of the tape on Youtube Oksana Zabuzhko.
Vozdvizhenka. In the frame today
Outdoors – July 2013. A real film sensation is erupting in the Mariupol Film Fund, where restorers of the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Center find the Ukrainian phonogram of the comedy "Chasing Two Hares" released in Kyiv in 1961. "It is in Mariupol that there are "large deposits" of interesting retro films. For example, more than fifty films of the Odessa Film Studio were stored there, which are not in the central film fund of Kyiv. The process of transferring many films to the Dovzhenko Center is currently underway," says Ivan Kozlenko, deputy general director of the aforementioned center.
"Such a diamond is in such manure..."
Literally the next day, Ukrainian-speaking Pronya Prokopivna and Svyrid Golokhvastov appear on the network. In the comments, quite different moods prevail among users: someone is dissatisfied, they say, there are a lot of those Ukrainian versions "lying" all over the country, but no one wants to look for them, someone naively declares this material as being made "in the face of Muscovites", but most people agree on one thing: watching in Ukrainian is more pleasant - both for the ear and for the heart. Why? Hmm, maybe because Viktor Ivanov's brainchild is originally Ukrainian?! Few people guessed about this in the "scoop", even fewer people knew it as a fact. However, the most attentive viewers have long noticed a certain desynchronization in the speech of the characters and the movements that their lips make.
Tricks for the party
From the very beginning, the comedy was planned as a purely local sketch based on a play by Starytskyi, which would not go beyond the borders of Ukraine. Or rather, it was not planned at all: Ivanov was disliked by the top brass, he was not allowed to shoot, and for the sake of this work, the talented director originally from Kozyatyn was forced to resort to certain tricks. Having slightly adjusted the script, Viktor Mikhailovich announced that he was going to satirically ridicule the dandies - the same young men who lived the "sweet life", while dressing colorfully in broad-shouldered jackets with bright ties, narrow trousers and shoes with "semolina porridge". Since the party policy of the time provided for a persistent fight against this "arbitrariness", the cabinet figures had no choice but to make concessions and give the "go" to "Zaitsy".
Later, while watching the film, Viktor Mikhailovich regretted that some moments with non-trivial wordplay were lost in the Russian dubbing.
The Ukrainian comedy was released on December 21, 1961. While respected critics were writing reviews of the “worst film of the year,” “Hare” was selling out all over the country. This turn of events clearly did not suit the people at the top, so they enthusiastically began launching the Russian version – all the characters re-read their texts, only now in “the one and mighty.” The film went far beyond the borders of the Ukrainian Republic, and no one was particularly embarrassed by the language in which it was broadcast to the masses.
"It's very very very! Yes! Yes! But... no!"
Once, as eyewitnesses say, about a year before his death, Ivanov visited the Dovzhenko film studio with the desire to watch his creation again. At that time, this process took place in a rather strange way for today: the director went to the workshop the day before to arrange for one of the editors to bring the YUFs (film print packaging boxes) with the film of the desired film. Then the viewing began in the cinema hall, which in appearance was an ordinary, slightly enlarged room.
"Thanks for the compliment."
Watching the film together with one of the studio employees (in fact, it was from the latter's words that this story reached the masses), Viktor Mikhailovich regretted that some moments with non-trivial wordplay were lost in the Russian dubbing (for example, “I have a pleasant day” received a counterpart in the form of the Russian clericalism “u menya priyemnyy den”), he also regretted that the Soviets cut “Zaitsiv”: the shot where Golokhvastov and his friends fall on the pavement and then start singing a song was not supposed to be the last in the film. The film was supposed to end with an episode in which the main character and the company find themselves in modern, already Soviet Kiev and begin to court Soviet girls. Apparently, the party, which did not treat Svyrid Petrovich very favorably (“remnants of capitalism”), saw this as a parody of itself and did not “give its approval” to such an ending.
Lost In Translation
What is the difference between these two versions – the new-old Ukrainian and, as it turned out, the rather artificially invented Russian? And the difference, first of all, is in the contrast, which O. Zabuzhko wrote about very aptly: “One recalls an anecdote, supposedly a song that the soldiers sing in Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” – “Ah, you are my dreams, my new dreams” – translated into French as “Oh, the vestibule, my vestibule.”
In addition to the aforementioned “welcome day,” there are several other moments where the hasty translation completely spoiled the meaning intended from the very beginning. For example, the legendary words of Mykola Yakovchenko (aka Prokip Sviridovich Sirko) “we are something else, and you are something else,” in the Russian interpretation received a dry and unfunny: “Мы – что– то одно, а вы – что– то другое.”
"My humblest bow to whoever is in this house."
When watching the film in the version we are used to, the viewer, over all these fifty-two years (although even after the sensational discovery of the Ukrainian version, our TV continues to broadcast "Hare" in Russian), could have formed a false perception of reality: Pronya, Golokhvastov and Serkovy speak "corrupted Russian", comically adapting their own language to the Ukrainian style and thereby personifying the degradation of the "real Russian Kievan". The rest of the characters speak normal, ordinary Russian.
Restaurant "Za dvam zaetsami" on Andriyivskyi Uzviz in Kyiv
But, watching the Ukrainian version, we understand how Ivanov really intended it all. All the inhabitants of Podil speak pure Ukrainian, and only the "spoiled surzhik" of Pronia, Golokhvastov, and Serkovych evokes sarcastic laughter and shows their incompetence.
"When a person is not like everyone else, then one is like this and the other is like that, and his mind is not for dancing, but for organizing himself, for resolving his existence, for knowing how to get around, and when such a person, if he is intelligent, raise your mind beyond the clouds and there with your mind become - rise even higher than the Lavra bell tower, and when he looks down at people from the top, they seem to him like that, such tiny, tiny, all like rats, sorry, like rats. Because that's the same person, and the one who is this is also an ignorant person, but and... why, that's really and really. Yes, yes, ... but no"
Author: Maksym Timchenko.
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