Larisa

---

MOSFILM:

LARISSA:

The film director Larissa Shepitko

died at the 187th kilometer

of the Leningradsky Highway

in a car accident.

She died together

with her colleagues:

the cinematographer Volodya Chukhnov,

the production designer Yura Fomenko

and three more members

of the filming crew.

They just began

shooting a film

based on Valentin Rasputin's book,

"Farewell to Matyora".

Larissa had been dreaming of this work,

as though preparing herself for it

all her life.

And that film was going

to become the climax

of her creative career.

Larissa Yefimovna had chosen me

to play the part of Darya

in her last film,

"Matyora".

To me, meeting her

was like a miracle.

And I'm certainly happy

to have been so close

to that miracle.

Camera!

Darya, what's the matter?

What will happen to us? What?

Where am I going from you? Why?

I pity Yegor so much.

Rolling.

Panorama.

Stop!

Action!

Stop!

Guilt without guilt is guilt, too.

That's why it's hard for me

to speak about Larissa.

Work on my novella

"Farewell to Matyora"

proved, as you know, for Larissa and

her friends to be their last work.

I remember the first time

Larissa called me

during one of my visits to Moscow,

and tentatively told me

that she would like to film "Matyora".

I went to meet her,

having two goals in mind.

First, to have a look at

the film director Larissa Shepitko,

who had just amazed me

with her film "Ascent".

And, second, to try not

to give "Matyora" to be filmed.

I wanted to keep my novella

in its generic

genre of prose.

But Larissa managed

to convince me pretty soon.

She began telling me

how she saw her future film.

She spoke so enthusiastically,

she seemed so interested

that I forgot about

not wanting to give "Matyora" away.

It was her ardor,

enthusiasm and selflessness,

even at the starting stage

of work on the film,

that amazed me then.

I was persuaded by our spiritual

affinity,

which I had

never doubted since.

I was persuaded by her creative,

not formal,

artistic reading of the book.

That's how we reached our agreement.

And then

the work on the film began.

That's how the spirit of the flooded

Matyora had been raised,

if we use

the language of mysticism,

the spirit of Matyora, which,

not understanding

why, for what purpose

it had been disturbed,

then took from us

a too great

and irreplaceable sacrifice.

Mitya, are you all right?

Mitya!

Mitya!

"Wings" is a film about people

scorched by the war,

about the never-to-be-healed

wounds of memory,

about the insufferableness

of wingless existence.

I want to make a declaration of love.

Love is the only thing

that never dies.

As there is no death.

Perhaps for the first time

in my life I realized that...

that if a person is talented,

that person is immortal.

And to my last day

I'll be proud of the fact

that I acted

in Larissa Shepitko's films.

Remember how it was in

"The Great Waltz"?

I'm giving you my word

that there's nothing, there's no

frame in my film,

not a single one, that doesn't

come from me as a woman.

I've never engaged in copycatting,

never tried

to imitate men,

because I know very well that

all the efforts of my girlfriends,

both older and younger than me,

to imitate men's cinema

were just nonsensical,

because all this is secondary.

But I make a distinction

between ladies, and men's cinema.

There's no women's and men's cinema.

There's ladies, cinema and there's

men's cinema.

Men, too, can do

perfectly well

the ladies,

sentimental needlework.

But a woman, as one half

of the humankind origin,

can tell the world, reveal to the world

some amazing things.

No man can

so intuitively discern

some phenomena

in human psyche, in nature

as a woman can.

After "Wings" Larissa made

"You and I" to a script

by Gennady Shpalikov.

Katya!

In that film

Larissa came close to the central

theme of her creative work,

the theme of merciless

judgment of yourself,

the high responsibility

each of us has

for everything we've done in life.

I was 16

when we held a family counsel.

I was finishing school.

It turned out that Larissa

could write a little,

compose poems, draw and sing.

Could do a bit of everything.

And none of those abilities

was so definite

for me to have

the nerve to apply

to an art school

or a literature institute.

And a friend of ours said

that there's a profession

in which all those little bits

might be very useful.

What's this profession?

Film directing.

I was a typical embryo.

It seems that Dovzhenko,

our master, decided

to trace by me the evolution of

mankind.

Unfortunately, my universities

under his guidance

were very short-lived.

He died 18 months later.

In his person, we came across

the greatest humanist.

I guess such people lived

in the age of Renaissance.

But most important, he was

an absolutely uncompromising person.

You know, to have

lived all his 60 years

in accord with his conscience,

not to waive in anything,

never to go against any

of his moral postulates,

always to tell people

the truth straight to the face,

it was extremely difficult.

It goes without saying that there was

no place for any falsity,

compromise,

mercenariness or hackwork.

I don't know how I could

look him in the eye now.

When I myself became

an independent person,

I came to know how difficult it is

to follow his behests in life.

To declare them is one thing.

But how can one live so each day?

Every day, every

second prompts us

to a practical necessity

to make a compromise,

to maneuver, keep silent sometimes,

make a concession,

in the hope of making up for it later.

It seems to be

what's called life flexibility.

It demands, it forces us.

It's not only us who do it, actually.

But it turns out

that if we think

we can be cunning just for 5 seconds

but make up for it later,

in art, it brings punishment,

a most cruel

and irreversible punishment.

You can't make a film

today just for money.

Well, I'll make

this passing movie,

I'll give in here,

I'll say what they want there,

I'll try to please them here

and avoid saying it there,

here I'll tell only a half-truth,

there I'll hush it up altogether,

but in my next film

I'll make up for it,

I'll tell everything I want,

in full measure,

as a creative person should,

as an artist, as a citizen,

I'll tell it all.

It's a lie.

It's impossible.

It's hopeless to deceive

yourself by this illusion.

If you stumbled once,

you'll never get back

on the path of truth,

you'll forget the way there.

You can't step twice

into the same river.

Larissa was born

just before the war

and, with her family, had gone through

all the hardships of the time -

air raids, hunger,

work unfit for a child.

Those impressions can never be

forgotten, they're burning you

and remain with you forever.

I think it was then

that an invisible bud sprouted,

the bud of the future work

that came many years later,

the ultimate achievement

of the director Larissa Shepitko,

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