November 30 2015 years
Gone Eldar Ryazanov — film director, author of the endlessly beloved films “Carnival Night”, “Beware of the Car”, “The Irony of Fate”, “Office Romance”, “Cruel Romance”, “Station for Two”, “Garage”.
"To betray in time is not to betray. It is to foresee!"
"We love you... deep down. Somewhere very deep."
"We won't hire Baba Yaga from outside, we'll raise her in-house!"
In connection with the anniversary of the release of "Carnival Night," it was shown again on TV after a long break. <> I was told that the film hasn't aged at all. I watched it too... and much of it seemed naive and old-fashioned to me. But one thing, unfortunately, hasn't faded: the image of a fool who, peremptorily and incompetently, tries to lead.
Born in 1927 Samara. At that time, my father was an employee of the trade mission in Iran. Eldar means "master of the country" in Persian. When he was three, his parents separated. By this time, the boy had learned to read and discovered the enchanting world of texts:
I remember how, having spread newspapers on the floor and lying on them, I mumbled the newspaper headlines, not understanding their meaning. I was intrigued by the miracle itself – how words are formed from letters.
In third grade, I cheated. Having found a new library (I'd read every age-appropriate book in the others) and gotten a school transcript, I changed my "3" to a "5" and started receiving the books allotted to fifth-graders. By eighth grade, I was already dreaming of becoming someone who could create better worlds.
My life back then held no interest—that's what I thought during that wartime. Long, hours-long lines for the rationed black bread; languishing in a cold barracks, where I had to light the stove with scraps of rubber tires discarded in the dump; hunting giant, half-meter-long rats scurrying around the barracks—all of this was everyday life, prose.
At 16, I finished school and took my 10th-grade exams as an external student. Wanting to experience life, I applied to a naval academy. I didn't get an answer. So, with a friend's company, I went to VGIK (All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography). I graduated with honors. I filmed stories for newsreels, but wasn't thrilled with it:
Documentary films of those years had no relation to life, to documents, or to the truth.
In 1955, he left for Mosfilm to make feature films. He sat down to write the script for "Carnival Night" out of persistence. Ivan Pyreev — He insisted that many people are capable of making melodramas, but only a few are capable of making good comedies.
Besides caustic satire, comedy can and should poke fun at the weaknesses, shortcomings, and sins of good and kind people. And here one often hears reproaches like: why did you put an intelligent person in a foolish position and laugh at him? But after all, it's precisely the intelligent person who can be put in a foolish position. A fool remains in that position his entire life.
Later he made comedies - the lyrical "Girl Without an Address", the heroic "The Hussar Ballad", the everyday "Give Me a Complaint Book", the eccentric "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia", and the philosophical "Old Robbers".
Topical satire immediately dies when the conditions of society change. For example, Emil Braginsky and I's story "Old Robbers" begins like this: "People are divided into those who live to retirement age, and the rest." Imagine a new law being introduced that would make pension payments to men not at age 60, as is currently the case, but at age 50. And that phrase of ours instantly loses its edge... And if pensions are paid at age 70, that same phrase becomes more vicious, more relevant.
The tragicomedy "Garage" is based on a true story: a meeting of the Mosfilm garage-building cooperative, of which Ryazanov was a member.
I would really like... for the film "Garage", which focused on many of our shortcomings, to become obsolete as soon as possible <> But - alas! - "Garage" is still a mirror of our unsightly life
In 1993, he supported Yeltsin. In 1996, he called for an end to the war in Chechnya. In 2011, he called Yeltsin's biggest mistake the appointment of Putin as his successor. He spoke out against the "Dima Yakovlev Law" and the persecution of Pussy Riot. In 2014, he condemned the intervention in Ukraine.
He passed away at the age of 88.