Director Chernitsky spoke about the “difficult” character of Irina Miroshnichenko

The actress played a mother whose son was in prison

In the 21st century, Irina Miroshnichenko starred in films very little. One of her last roles was in the film “Farewell Echo”, which was released in 2004. Narrated by director Igor Chernitsky.

– When I called her and offered her a role, a story happened similar to the one that happened with The Master and Margarita, when Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova flew to Tvardovsky’s office, as if on a broomstick.

So Irina Petrovna ended up at Mosfilm. She and I were very interested and talked to the point. She was kind to the role, even in the car she did some kind of massage, masks. There were curlers on the head. She had not filmed for a long time, so she was very nervous. Still, the main role, a lot of text.

She prepared so carefully for the role that she literally became younger in the frame. If you watch the movie, you will see how charming and beautiful she is there.

We planned a certain number of scenes, but she could tell she was tired. It bothered me, of course, but she was so attentive to my comments that she was accurate in every scene. She has the role of a mother, whose son got into a difficult situation and ended up in prison. And she is exactly what a mother should be.

Her partners were Svetlana Kryuchkova, Yuri Nazarov, Nina Usatova. But there were also debutants. The now famous actress Svetlana Ivanova had just completed her first year at VGIK and had not acted anywhere else. For her, working with an actress of such a class as Miroshnichenko is the same as several VGIKs.

I always liked Irina Petrovna as an actress. There was not a single passing picture with her participation. Everywhere it is different and accurate.

I didn’t know she had a complex personality. But the difficulty was only in the fact that she was demanding, first of all, to herself and, of course, to the group. I remember how I came up with something with a flower, and then I said: “This is a clip, we are reshooting.” But the result is success.

You can call capriciousness that I offer her one thing, and she insists on another. But this is acting professionalism, laid down by the theater, he brought up in her attention to the director. She understood that the film was made by the director, and it was necessary to hear and understand what he wanted. I do not remember a single moment when we clashed in an irreconcilable dispute. There has always been understanding. It was difficult for her because she was not used to the TV rhythm with the norm of 14 hours a day. What is TV cinema? There is no time to rehearse, there is a lot to film. As a result, we all made it.

When the premiere was on television, she called me and said that she liked the picture. Miroshnichenko, Kryuchkova, Nazarov – these are the supports, the locomotives that pulled the cars. I was very sad to find out today that she was gone. She hid that she was sick. The departure of such a large-scale actors is a big shock. This is the departure of the cinema on which I grew up – world-class Soviet cinema.