"I found a boy for the role of Pinocchio in the Minsk underpass": how the fairy tale "The Adventures of Pinocchio" was filmed
The fairy tale film "The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Pinocchio", without a doubt, belongs to the golden fund of Russian cinema. The premiere on television took place on January 1-2, 1976, that is, 42 years ago.
The director of the film Leonid Nechaev found a boy for the role of Pinocchio in the Minsk underpass. "I see a grandmother running with her grandson. There's a pipe under his arm, skates in his hands," Nechaev recalls. — I introduce myself, I invite her to act in a movie, and she responds to me: "Darling! What movie? See, we're running from music to figure skating!""
Dima Iosifov himself, who played the wooden boy, says that he did not really want to act. A brilliant cast gathered on the set — Vladimir Etush, Roland Bykov, Rina Zelenaya, Nikolai Grinko, Yuri Katin-Yartsev, Vladimir Basov. The young actors treated each of them differently.
A separate story was with a long nose. They made it out of styrofoam. At the same time, he had to be very mobile. During the entire shooting, Pinocchio's nose was changed 45 times. 45 noses — and all of them were made by a single master. The first nose did not quite fit, and gradually it was shortened to fit the actor's facial expressions. The makeup artist spent an hour and a half to glue his nose. Just imagine what perseverance an actor should be, besides a child of 9-10 years old. "If any of you were attentive, you might have noticed that at the beginning of the film my nose is 15 mm longer than at the end," Dmitry shares secrets.
After that, Etush complained to the director: "What an evil boy this Dimka is. He's not just throwing this bump, he's aiming at my head. It definitely hits. The meeting of Pinocchio with the Tortoise Tortilla was filmed near Minsk on a specially dug pond.
"The air temperature is plus eight, the water is plus four, and I'm sitting in a thin jacket on a sheet of "water lilies" that lies on an ordinary inflated camera. In general, I turned over a couple of times," says the former Pinocchio. "Every time the shooting stopped, they rubbed me with alcohol."
"The girls who portrayed frogs had it even worse. They regularly had to splash into the water and in the end Tortila — Rina Zelenaya — told the director: "If you shoot a double again and make the children climb into cold water, I get in the car and leave!""Zelenaya flew to Belarus only for one day, her only sister died the day before," recalls Dmitry.
— She was so sad, she told sad stories. According to the doctors' recommendations, she had to move constantly. She leaned on me, and we walked slowly around the pond with her."
At first, Nechaev offered the role of Tortoise Tortilla to Faina Ranevskaya, but when she learned that the film would be shot in Belarus, she said that because of her already middle-aged age, she agreed to shoot only if the shooting took place in the entrance of her house.
"The hardest part was crying during filming. For example, when I feel sorry for Pinocchio, planted in a dark closet. They put glycerin in my eyes and brought onions to my eyes — but there was no sense. Everyone was very angry. Especially the director. He began to talk to me very strictly. I burst into tears from resentment. Leonid Alekseevich took the camera himself and shouted: "We're shooting!" After that, he treated me to sweets and calmed me down."
According to Tatiana, she became famous only a few years later. When the film became popular. And they pointed a finger on the street, and the lovers walked under the windows. Thousands of letters came from all over the Soviet Union, in which they confessed their love and offered friendship.
"Do you remember the scene in the tavern when they break the jug in which Pinocchio is sitting? — Dmitry smiles. — It was huge and heavy — I got into it entirely. Everyone was afraid to throw a mug at him — you never know what, the child is inside! And it was necessary to remove it from the first take, the jug was the only one. When it split, the neck hung on my neck. Everyone on the set gasped!"
A separate story happened when shooting a scene when a fox and a cat hang Pinocchio to a tree by his legs. Dima's mom categorically did not want her son to hang upside down: "We need a backup!" In the end, she was fooled. Nechaev later recalled: "I called Dimka and said: "We need to do something!" He: "I understand!" - and begins to whine: "I want to eat, I can't! My stomach hurts!"While mom went to the store, we hung Pinocchio."
Answering the question whether there were any romances between the "youth" on the set, Iosifov laughs: "What's there, we played Indians in between filming! Tanya Protsenko, who played Malvina, was a real beauty. Romka Colledartz — Pierrot — courted her not only according to the script."
By the way, according to director Leonid Nechaev, the golden key was the most valuable thing — everyone really wanted to steal it. Nechaev himself stole it: "On the last shooting day after the command "Stop! I put it in my bosom and later just bought it back. I still have a receipt that says: "Received from Nechaev for a key prop: 30 rubles"".
Leonid Nechaev asked Alla Pugacheva to sing one of the songs for The Adventures of Pinocchio, but she refused, stating: "I'm afraid I can't do it." As a result, the song was performed by Irina Ponarovskaya.
Roma Stokartz, who played Piero, became a pediatrician, lives in Israel.
Artemon (Thomas Augustinas) is a prosperous businessman who lives in Canada.
Grisha Svetlorusov, who played the role of Harlequin, graduated from the KGB high school.
And Dmitry Iosifov, aka Pinocchio, graduated from the acting faculty of VGIK and the directing department of the film faculty of the Belarusian Academy of Arts, starred in 15 films, worked on the projects "The Last Hero" and "Ten Little Negroes", directed two series of "Killer Force". Dmitry has two wonderful sons growing up, who also watch a movie with dad's participation with great pleasure.
Keywords: Actors | Director | Fairy tale | Ussr | Shooting | Film | Films