11 August 1968 year
Stanislav Rostotsky's film has begun its journey across the country's screens. "We'll live until Monday." It immediately sparked controversy—talking about teacher-student relationships in this way was not customary in the USSR.
Happiness is when you are understood
The film was based on the thesis of a VGIK student. Georgy Polonsky. The director recalled that he and the director of the Gorky Film Studio liked the script so much that they decided to film it at their own risk, without waiting for a response from Goskino:
We understood that the film could be closed at any moment, so we shot the film in just 3,5 months.
The film follows three days in the life of a ninth-grade student at an ordinary Soviet school. The central character is a favorite student, a veteran of the war, and historian Ilya Melnikov. He is straightforward and principled—so much so that he often gets into conflict with others, for example, over his colleagues' poorly written language. (“I tell them: “Don’t put the mirror on the desk!”, but they do!”).
A conflict is also brewing within the teacher - due to a midlife crisis and the unattainability of the ideals of youth, and due to the ingratitude and cynicism of some of the once beloved students, and due to the constant responsibility for the decisions made - otherwise, "a different craft" is needed, where "marriage is cheaper."
You give him a F, and then he'll turn into Yuri Nikulin. And it will turn out that I was stifling the future of our art.
Melnikov played Vyacheslav Tikhonov He didn't agree right away; the role seemed bland to him. But the director convinced him and his colleagues that it would be a perfect fit. The actor recalled:
What a blessing that Rostotsky didn't back down, insisted on his own and forced me to act, and this helped me regain faith in myself and return to cinema.
Understanding oneself and one's place in life, searching for answers to questions like what happiness and love are, protesting against injustice—all of this was very unusual for a film about school.
Others saw, I saw,
Like a tame stupid tit
They tried to transform the crane
The film premiered in the summer of 1968, and was released in the fall. In 1969, it won gold at the Moscow Film Festival.
