Movie legend: "Only old men go into battle"

48 years ago, on August 12, one of the best films about the Great Patriotic War was undoubtedly released on the screens of the country — "Only old people go into battle".

The idea to make this film came to Leonid Bykov's head a long time ago. During the war, he dreamed of becoming a pilot, but because of his small stature, he was not taken to flight school. But the love for the people of this heroic profession continued to live in him constantly. After Bykov moved from Leningrad to Kiev in the early 70s, he decided to make his first film at the local film studio about military pilots.

In collaboration with two screenwriters-Evgeny Onoprienko and Alexander Satsky-he wrote a script based on the true events of the Great Patriotic War. In particular, under the identity of the squadron commander of the guard, Lieutenant Titarenko (aka Maestro), the Hero of the Soviet Union, the guy from the Arbat, Vitaly Popkov, was hiding. 

During the war, he served in the legendary 5th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment under the command of Vasily Stalin, and his squadron was nicknamed "singing" because it had its own choir, and two planes were presented to the front by the Utesov orchestra, and one had the inscription "Funny Guys"on it. By the way, Vasily Stalin's regiment reached Berlin and shot down a record number of enemy aircraft — 744, had 27 Heroes of the Soviet Union in its ranks (14 of them served under the Maestro directly, and Popkov himself was installed in Moscow after the war as a double Hero).

When Bykov wrote the script, he tried not to deviate too much from the actual events, although he still thought about something and changed it. For example, he came up with a new character — a Grasshopper. In fact, the low turns over the airfield in front of the girls were performed by none other than Popkov himself, for which the commander ordered him to ban combat sorties for a month. But there were few such deviations from the real events in the script, and the lion's share of what we see in the film is true.

This is the love of the Uzbek Romeo (the real name of the pilot was Marnsaev) for the Russian Juliet, and their subsequent death (the girl died during the bombing of the dining room, and Romeo laid down his head in one of the battles)…

...and the mechanic's habit of baptizing planes before departure…

...and the Maestro was captured by his own people (to prove his belonging to the Red Army, he had to punch one of the guards in the face), etc., etc.

Meanwhile, when the script was written and sent "up", an unexpected answer soon came from there: they say, the material is not heroic. High censors were outraged by the fact that Soviet pilots are depicted in many scenes as singing clowns. In short, Bykov was initially banned from making such a film.

But he did not despair. To prove the opposite, Bykov undertook... to "run in" the script on stage. His reading of individual pieces of the script in various cities of the Soviet Union caused such delight among the listeners that the censors no longer had any doubts about the correctness of the created work. And then people who themselves knew firsthand about the war began to stand up for the script. In particular, on November 14, 1972, Colonel Lyazhov, the chief of staff of military unit 55127, sent a letter to Dovzhenko's film studio. He wrote that the script he read was an honest story about the war and about the people who won it.

On February 20, 1973, the film was launched during the preparatory period. And here Bykov also had to face a number of difficulties. For example, the approval of the Leningrad actor Alexey Smirnov for the role of the auto technician Makarych cost him a lot of nerves. He was known to a wide audience primarily as a comedy actor, and at Bykov he was to become a front-line soldier. 

Upon learning about this, the officials from the cinema sharply opposed: "This will not happen! He has a stupid face!" But when Bykov said that he would refuse to make a film if there was no Smirnov in it, when he told that "the actor with a stupid face" was himself a former front-line soldier who returned from the war a full knight of the Orders of Glory, the resistance of the officials was broken. By the way, the patronymic of the film technique Bykov gave the same thing that Smirnov actually wore-Makarych.

A great help in the work on the film was provided by the Marshal of aviation, the legendary pilot Alexander Pokryshkin. When Bykov asked for an appointment with him to get him to allocate real wartime aircraft for filming, the marshal was initially wary of this request. There were too many passing films about the war in those years for the marshal to immediately believe in Bykov's idea to shoot "netlenka". He asked me to leave him the script for a few days to get to know the material better. But it didn't take a few days. Literally overnight, Pokryshkin swallowed the script and ordered to give the filmmakers not one, not two, but as many as five planes: four Yak-18 fighters and a Czechoslovak 2-326, which looks like a Messerschmitt-109. The cars were delivered to the Kiev airfield "Chaika", where they were repainted and given a front-line appearance.

The shooting of the film began on May 22 in the pavilion of the Dovzhenko studio in the scenery "KP dugout" and "battalion commander's dugout". Then the shooting moved to nature: at the end of May, they began filming the air battles of the Yaks with the Messers. This is how the participant of those shootings, the cameraman Vital Kondratiev, recalls about it: "For the convenience of aerial filming, I came up with a special device that was attached between the first and second cabins and allowed taking a close-up shot right during the flight. Bykov approved of my invention and immediately decided to be the first to take to the air to test it in practice.

The pilot wrote out "barrels" and "dead loops" in the sky, and Leonid Fedorovich turned on the camera, pressed the trigger and shouted into the lens: "Seryoga, cover! I'm attacking!" After a few takes, the plane would land, I would change the tape with the film, and the car would rise into the sky again. At the end of the shooting day, Bykov literally fell out of the plane and plopped down on the green grass of the airfield. "Well, how are you?" — I asked, running up to him, and I heard in response: "We will develop the film — we will see!"

In early June, they began filming episodes of "at the airfield". Since Bykov did not like being duplicated, he tried to do all the tricks himself. And during the filming, he mastered the control of aircraft quite well. True, he did not lift them into the air, but he independently started the engine and taxied around the airfield. Sometimes it couldn't do without overlays. Somehow he could not calculate the course, and the right wheel fell into a pit from a pyrotechnic explosion. 

The plane nodded, the propeller blades flew, the rear wheel broke off along with the rack. Bykov earned a hefty bump on his forehead, but that wasn't why he was upset. The fact is that the accident occurred on the same "Yak" with notes and a treble clef painted on the board. Since taking the plane to Kiev for repair meant losing a lot of time, it was decided to restore the "iron bird" on the spot, on its own. A prudent mechanic seized several spare blades from Kiev, which were immediately installed on the damaged car. 

But the rear chassis needed welding. And then the operator V. Kondratiev took up the task. He put the mutilated part in the trunk of his car and went to Chernihiv to the station of young technicians, where he had friends. However, when he arrived, there was no one at the station. The operator had to catch them at home. After learning that he and Bykov were making a movie about front-line pilots, the masters gladly agreed to help them. The rack was brewed, and the next morning the plane was ready to fly again.

Meanwhile, a few days later, a new emergency happened: the performer of the role of the Dark-skinned Anatoly Mateshko, who was seduced by the main role in another film, left the picture. Next, we will listen to the story of the film's cameraman V. Kondratiev: "I remember that morning I met Bykov in the buffet. He stood upset and crumpled a piece of paper in his hands. In response to my surprised look, he handed me a telegram from the film studio: "Urgently send Mateshko to Kiev." 

What can you do about it? We went to the set, and just then the assistant director brought "yellowheads" from Kiev — young guys — students of the theater institute who had just graduated from the first year. They were introduced to Bykov. He examined the novice actors with a professional look, looking for a new Dark-skinned girl, and settled on a nineteen-year-old boy, Seryozha Podgorny..."

Meanwhile, there was still a month left before the end of filming, and on September 8-10 the finale was already being filmed: Maestro, Makarych and Grasshopper find the grave of two pilots, one of whom was the bride of their comrade Romeo. As we now know, the film ends with an episode when the Maestro and Makarych are sitting in the steppe near the monument, and the song "For that guy"will sound against the background of this final frame.

In mid-September, the group relocated to the Dovzhenko Film Studio, where they had to shoot the pavilions. So, on September 20-24, an episode was filmed in the "dining room" scenery: A grasshopper, having masterfully filled up the "messer" in front of his native squadron, comes to the dining room, where his comrades arrange a solemn reception for him.

On the same days, another "dining" episode was filmed: when the pilots of the" second singing " commemorate the deceased Dark-skinned woman. In the next few days, episodes were filmed in the scenery: "the girls 'hut", "tent", "the hut of the 2nd squadron". In parallel, aerial battles were filmed.

The shooting of the film ended in mid-October, after which the editing began. It lasted until December 6. Six days later, the film was accepted at the studio without amendments, and on December 27, the tape was handed over to the State Cinema of Ukraine. Not only the high ranks of the Ukrainian cinema were invited to it, but also those about whom, in fact, this film was told — front-line pilots. One of them was the famous Soviet ace, three times Hero of the Soviet Union, who shot down 59 fascist planes in 156 air battles, Alexander Pokryshkin. The tape literally shook him. When the lights were turned on in the hall, it did not escape the audience that Pokryshkin was wiping away tears.

And then the prototype of Maestro Vitaly Popkov himself looked at the picture. Here is his story about it: "I was on duty in Kiev, called Lena Bykov, went with him to the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, played the film. The Minister persists: what kind of film is this, he says, people do not return from combat missions, they die, and they sing live songs. And he summarizes: this did not happen at the front and could not have happened. I ask the minister: was he at the front himself? 

The logic of the official is amazing: he was not there, he answers, but I know. And then I told the minister that I had flown on one of the two planes bought with Jazz Utesov's money and presented to our regiment. And that Leonid Osipovich and his musicians came to our airfield, and we played together and sang together. Convinced. He was probably influenced not so much by my arguments as by the general's epaulettes and two heroic Stars..."

In many respects, it was thanks to the good reviews of former front-line soldiers who had time to watch the film before it was released on the wide screen, the State Cinema decided to encourage the creators of the picture. On February 6, 1974, an order was issued to pay them a monetary reward. 

It was a fair decision, considering that the tape was shot with great savings: 325 thousand rubles were spent out of 381 thousand rubles allocated for its production. There were 39 people among those who were encouraged. When awarding, highlight the director-director Leonid Bykov: he was paid 200 rubles of the award and awarded the title of "director‑director of the 1st category" (for example: actors A. Smirnov, V. Talashko and S. Ivanov were paid 50 rubles each).

Meanwhile, the management of the Dovzhenko Film Studio will find the amount of remuneration to the main creators of the film insufficient, and it will petition the State Committee for the authors of the script (L. Bykov, E. Onoprienko and A. Satsky) to raise the fee from 6 thousand rubles to the maximum — 8 thousand. 

However, this trick will not work: Goskino will consider that "the work of the team is encouraged quite convincingly and an increase in the fee does not seem appropriate." This is despite the fact that in a few months the film "Only old people go into battle" will collect many prizes at various film festivals and bring income of hundreds of millions of rubles.

The film was released on the wide screen on August 12, 1974. And by the end of the year, he had collected 44 million 300 thousand viewers at his sessions (4th place), which was a big surprise: by that time, films about the Great Patriotic War had practically not collected such a "box office".