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The name of the director Eldar Ryazanov is embedded in the treasury of Soviet and Russian cinema. He is rightfully considered a classic of national cinematography. The work of Eldar Ryazanov can be compared to such a giant of Italian cinematography as Federico Fellini.
The daily living and the stories of ordinary people from different social strata are the main material for the cinematographic works of both masters of cinema.
Eldar Ryazanov began his career as a graduate of the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK,) having graduated from the course of the legendary Soviet director Grigory Kozintsev and having been the teacher of the VGIK himself, Sergei Eisenstein, with whom he developed a very warm relationship and with whom he even visited his home.
Ryazanov came to the VGIK by chance, in the company of his friends. When he had already studied two courses, his master Grigory Kozintsev said: “You're too young for this profession, and I want to expel you.” The witty Eldar Ryazanov immediately responded: “When you enrolled me two years ago, I was even younger. That was the end of the incident.
Kozintsev was strict to his students, but also helped many. It was he who advised the young film director Ryazanov to go into documentary filmmaking after graduating from VGIK, because it was almost unreal to get into feature films at the time. Very few films were shot per year. Working in documentaries, Ryazanov went through a very good school. He had already made quite a few projects, when he was assigned by the Central Documentary Film Studio (CSDF) to make a film about Sakhalin.
The nature of the island, the people and their lives inspired Ryazanov to make a very serious film. He had to work in difficult climatic conditions but it resulted in a good material for the film. Ryazanov filmed with Vasily Katanyan, son of the famous Vasily Katanyan, husband of the famous Lily Brik.
Vasily was Ryazanov's course mate in VGIK, and an ethereal friendship with him he retained through his life. If a character in Ryazanov's film needed a surname, a character with the surname Katanyan was sure to appear in the script.
The film about Sakhalin was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and was awarded the prize. The tandem with his first wife, film editor Zoya Fomina, also formed Ryazanov as a personality. They lived together for over 30 years, and all their life together, he consulted his wife on many creative issues. His second wife, Nina Skuibina-Ryazanova, editor of Mosfilm, and his third and last wife, Emma Abaidullina, journalist and film editor, were his muses and inspired his creativity.
After five years of working in documentary films, life literally pushed Ryazanov into feature films. Director of the Mosfilm studio the almighty Ivan Pyrev literally forced Ryazanov, who had left the documentary film and worked as an assistant director at the studio, to take on the shooting of Carnival Night (1956). Ryazanov long refused, saying that the comedy is not his genre, but in the end agreed. This was the same “stroke of luck” that gave the Soviet cinema a master of lyrical comedy.
It is also interesting how the film ‘Unbelievable Adventures of Italians in Russia’ (1973) was created. After arriving in Rome, Ryazanov and a film group came to the studio of Dino de Laurentiis, a producer and businessman, a famous Italian director, where Federico Fellini shot his films. The atmosphere was already heated. First, the script had to be reworked and rewritten many times, and the budget and shooting time were limited. At first, Ryazanov was not satisfied with the attitude of the Italians and the living conditions of the Soviet film crew, and he wanted to give up filming and had to set his own conditions: provide a normal hotel for accommodation, provide the film crew with food, etc.
In the original version of the script, Ryazanov's Italian collaborators liked only the story of the lion chasing the treasure hunters, everything else had to be added and rewritten. The final version included texts by Italian colleagues and Russian scriptwriters. The Italians wanted action, a lot of stunts and obligatory car chases. A spectacular scene of an airplane landing right on the highway in the midst of a moving stream of cars was invented for the script. The film was loved by the audience both in Russia and Italy.
Here is how longtime collaborators and colleagues Emil Braginsky and Eldar Ryazanov met. They did not immediately become co-authors. Having met in mutual company at director Anatoly Rybakov's, they then for many years, meeting and running through their affairs, said to each other, “Hello, how are you?” As Emil Braginsky once wrote, they could have become co-authors much earlier. But finally, in 1963, there was their meeting, which culminated in the writing of the story ‘Beware of the Car!’ Before its implementation as a screenplay a lot of time passed, because the leadership of the Mosfilm film studio did not like the main character Yuri Detochkin. Being a positive character, he did absolutely non-positive actions, and in general turned out to be a noble, but a crook. Therefore, the script for a long time did not approve. As a result, Braginsky and Ryazanov transformed it into a novella and published in the magazine. Subsequently, very often they have a great story growing out of the script, the script gets a play. Together they worked for 35 years. With the departure of his co-author, Ryazanov longed for their joint work.
They worked together the following way: first, an idea was born – and there were always many ideas – and then were quickly discarded by both co-authors. Then new ideas were born and discarded again, until the right one was found to write the story. Often, the basis of the script served as an interesting case. For example, the New Year's comedy ‘Irony of Fate’ (1975), without which no New Year's Eve show can do without, was born from a story about a man who, after a sauna, ran into some friends, there was a party, everyone got drunk, and the friends decided to send him by train to Leningrad. The man ended up in the city on the Neva with a briefcase, a bath broom, and 15 kopecks in his pocket. Gradually the image of the main character is born. It is a doctor, and the authors give him the surname Lukashin. In order that the hero could not sober up quickly, and all his adventures in Leningrad look comedic, the authors send him there by plane. Then it is made up that he gets to the same street as in Moscow, and the key comes to the door of the apartment with the same number as the hero in Moscow, etc. Also based on a true story from life - a dramatic episode is the film ‘Station for Two’ (1982), when the composer Mikael Tariverdiev was in a car accident, and his wife was driving, and he took the blame for it in order to save her. There were many such stories in Ryazanov and Braginsky's work together. There is no point in enumerating all the works of the director Eldar Ryazanov here. People's fame knows their names and plots by heart.
In 2005, the Eldar cinema club was opened in Moscow, where films of the Master and other authors, as well as concerts have been and are being screened. During Eldar Ryazanov's lifetime, there were artists' parties, evenings of meetings of the director's friends, humor and laughter always accompanied these gatherings. In Samara, where the director was born, a museum was opened, where his original things and artifacts were given. The memory of the Master of Comedy will forever remain in our hearts.