Playwright Natalya Ryazantseva, the muse of Shpalikov and Averbakh, has died

The exquisite beauty of Soviet cinema, who wrote scripts for Kira Muratova and Larisa Shepitko, lived modestly, without ambition

On January 10, Natalya Ryazantseva died – an outstanding Soviet and Russian screenwriter, an absolute beauty who retained her special position, independent disposition and clarity of mind until her last days. She was 84 years old. She lived a “long and happy life,” in the words of her first husband, Gennady Shpalikov, who made the film of the same name.

Natalya Ryazantseva outlived her outstanding men for decades – the poet and screenwriter of the films “Zastava Ilyich” and “I’m walking around Moscow” Gennady Shpalikov (he committed suicide in 1974), her second husband and representative of the “Leningrad school”, film director Ilya Averbakh ( he died in 1986), with whom she worked as a screenwriter on the films “Personal Life of Kuzyaev Valentin”, “Alien Letters”, “Voice” (this film was valued in his filmography most of all), a prominent scientist and philosopher Merab Mamardashvili ( died in 1990 at the age of sixty). She remembered them respectfully, while calling all things by their proper names, but she could not forgive others for some attacks, she wondered why Marlen Khutsiev, whose talent she highly appreciated, often spoke of Shpalikov’s indiscipline and infidelity. Natalya Borisovna a was exceptionally truthful in the cinema and in life. She always gave a direct answer to a direct question, she never dissembled. She wrote Addresses and Dates about Mamardashvili, their long-term romance, where she honestly talked about how they met, how her marriage with Averbakh was already bursting at the seams, who by that time had become interested in the Polish actress Eva Shukulskaya, who starred in his film Explanation in love”.

Young Ryazantseva starred in Ilyich’s Outpost by Marlen Khutsiev, written by Gennady Shpalikov, in the very scene of the “golden youth”, where, in addition to her, very young Andrei Tarkovsky, Olga Gobzeva, Evgeny Mitta, Svetlana Svetlichnaya, Pavel Finn participated – a dizzying generation, equal to which in the history of Soviet cinema, probably not. Svetlana Svetlichnaya appears in the episode on the table in Ryazantseva’s scarf. Everything happened spontaneously .. According to Natalya Borisovna, this episode was filmed for 21 shifts, and for her tiny role she received a salary corresponding to 21 shifts.

Her colleagues and numerous students now remember how beautiful she was in everything, how elegantly she smoked, how she taught difficult things. Ryazantseva, being a graduate of VGIK and the workshop of Yevgeny Gabrilovich, taught there until the last days, as well as at the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Directors. She had a hard time being forced to retire. She did not understand how it was possible to teach screenwriters at a distance, and she was out of tune with the new means of communication. All the time I had to ask someone to help in this difficult matter for her. At VGIK, young Ryazantseva, who entered there at the age of 16, met Gennady Shpalikov, who studied a year younger and became an absolute star there. But Ryazantseva was also talented and extraordinarily good. She recalled how different her friend Kira Muratova was at VGIK, with whom they made “Long Farewell”. Muratova, with her Romanian roots, seemed like a foreigner, but Ryazantseva herself, judging by the photographs and memoirs of her friends, was unusually good, by no means local beauty. The marriage with Gennady Shpalikov was short-lived, student, experimental, as Natalya Borisovna herself said. But his photograph adorned her bookcase until the last days. It is curious that she cut off her image – she did not like herself. So the half-hearted photo was kept among book rarities.

Natalya Ryazantseva was born in Moscow on October 27, 1938 and has been associated with cinema all her life. Yevgeny Gabrilovich took her to the course when she was only 16 years old – he felt talent. It’s hard to believe, but “Wings” by Larisa Shepitko became her feature film debut. She wrote the script together with Valentin Yezhov (“White Sun of the Desert”). She also wrote scripts for the films “Personal Life” by Kuzyaev Valentin by Igor Maslennikov and Ilya Averbakh, “The Open Book” by Vladimir Fetin, “The Scarlet Flower” by Irina Povolotskaya, “Portrait of the Artist’s Wife” by Alexander Pankratov, “Lights of the Brothel” by Alexander Gordon.

A couple of years before her death, in one of the interviews, when asked about what would happen after death, she answered that nothing would happen. Natalya Ryazantseva grieved that every day someone dies and there are no friends left in this world at all. Everybody left. Gennady Shpalikov was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery in Moscow, Ilya Averbakh in the village of Komarovo near St. Petersburg. Natalia Ryazantseva will say goodbye on January 13th. The place of her burial is specified.