May 26, 1998
Emil Braginsky, prose writer, screenwriter, playwright and co-author of Eldara Ryazanov, has died. From under their joint pen came Yuri Detochkin, Zhenechka Lukashin, Anatoly Efremovich Novoseltsev and other equally colorful heroes of a dozen beloved films.
Back in my distant school days, a gypsy woman told me I'd live to be thirty-four. When I turned thirty-four, I felt, not exactly miserable, but uneasy. Now this collection ["Almost a Funny Story"] is being published to coincide with my seventieth birthday. Seventy is a terrifying thing! In one of my plays, written several years ago, I gloomily remarked, obviously addressing myself: "The only thing worse than old age is extreme old age!"
Emil Braginsky was born in 1921 to a family of doctors. He lost his mother at an early age and lived with his older sister. He studied at the Moscow Law Institute and wrote for newspapers. In the 1950s, plays based on Braginsky's scripts began to be staged. The comedy "Open Window" starred a young Alisa Freindlich and a young Yevgeny Leonov; the play was performed over 200 times. After one of the performances, Mosfilm editor-in-chief Yuri Shevkunenko introduced Braginsky to Eldar Ryazanov.
Until 1963, neither of us suspected that we would unite and that a writer with the double surname Braginsky-Ryazanov would be born and say, "Beware of the car." Ryazanov and I are completely different people in everything, especially in our personalities. We agree on only one thing, the most important thing for us: comedy (we have stubbornly repeated this for over twenty-five years) is the shortest path to the audience's heart. Comedy can address any issue, even the most serious ones. Humor for us is not an end in itself, but merely a means of communication. People speak different languages, but laugh the same way.
Of the ten films he co-directed with Ryazanov, one—Quiet Pools—was released after Braginsky's death. Of the others, seven were particularly beloved by Braginsky: Beware of the Car, Zigzag of Luck, The Irony of Fate, Office Romance, Garage, Station for Two, and Forgotten Melody for Flute. Excerpts from some of these are included in our selection.