Queen beyond formulas – Culture – Kommersant

In the 80th year of her life in Moscow, after a long illness, the People’s Artist of the USSR (1991) and simply the great Russian actress Inna Churikova, who made up a unique creative duet with her husband Gleb Panfilov, died after a long illness, in ten films of which she played.

Churikova-Panfilov – this is pronounced as if in one word, in one breath: other examples of such a lifelong creative community cannot be found in world cinema, except perhaps with the exception of the Fellini-Mazin duet. It’s not that Churikova didn’t play with other, equally important directors – she played, and played relatively a lot. And it’s not that her roles outside of Panfilov’s films were always “not that” – they were still like “that”. But the alchemical magic of her impossible charm, her bizarre gift shone from the screen only when Panfilov filmed her.

According to the plot of Panfilov’s masterpiece “The Beginning” (1970), the director, who conceived a film about the Maid of Orleans, saw his Joan of Arc in a dude from the amateur art circle of a weaving factory: Pasha Stroganova rushed across the stage on a broomstick, portraying Baba Yaga.

In life, everything was almost the same. A graduate of the Schepkin School really played Baba Yaga on the stage of the Youth Theater in the play based on the play by Yevgeny Schwartz “Two Maples”. And by her very appearance she was doomed to sharp character roles – as a rule, episodic ones: “the girl who won the rooster contest” in “I walk around Moscow” (1963) by Georgy Danelia or Blond Josi in “The Elusive Avengers” (1966) by Edmond Keosoyan. Well, if a larger role fell out, then it was the fear-man Marfushechka-darling (“Morozko” by Alexander Rowe, 1966), who cracked nuts with her teeth and in the final went to the screen in a sleigh pulled by three pigs.

And only Panfilov discovered in Churikova a special, let’s say, gothic, sharp, prickly beauty.

As soon as he looked into her eyes, they literally lit up the screen, ennobling the unsightly, and even terrible reality, as the builders of cathedrals ennobled the Middle Ages with their impulse to the sky. Or how they ennobled, gave the highest meaning to the civil war, the stupid massacre in a peasant country, the drawings of a naive artist, nuggets of Tanya Tetkina, who gives her life not so much for the world revolution as for her friends (“There is no ford in the fire” Panfilov, 1967). In general, the cross-cutting theme of the duet of Churikova and Panfilov is a breakthrough to something bright, higher: sometimes, as in the story of Tanya, a modern saint similar to the martyrdom, sometimes – suppressed by life, failed.

The ideal Jeanne – the best Orleans maiden in world cinema was not and is not – in the “Beginning”. Elizaveta Uvarova, chairman of the city executive committee, exercising in trap shooting and, it seems, renounced everything human, in I Ask for Words (1975). Ascetic-guide from the remote province of Sashenka in “Theme” (1979). The best Vassa Zheleznova (“Vassa”, 1982) and the best Nilovna (“Mother”, 1989). Churikova did not play with Panfilov except in The Romanovs (2000) – but she was a co-author of the script there and voiced the English actress who played Alexandra Fedorovna. The last time they worked together was on Ivan Denisovich (2020), where Churikova got the role of an almost camp Mother of God.

Even such masters as Semyon Aranovich (The Year of the Dog, 1994) or Andrei Konchalovsky (Ryaba the Hen, 1994) failed to repeat this miracle. In their hands, the heroines of Churikova became nothing more than holy fools. Episodic eccentrias suited her much more: the actress seemed to feel nostalgic for the times of Tyuz. And the best of these eccentrias is the role of the actress Kunina, who sporadically enters into the lives of the heroes of Stanislav Govorukhin’s film Bless the Woman (2003). Churikova clearly enjoyed portraying the transparently disguised Ranevskaya – an actress, somewhat related to her, but who did not experience the happiness of meeting her and only her director.

Probably, if it were not for the success in the cinema that quickly came, the blind theater would not have seen a great talent in Churikova. In the early 1970s, after the films “There is no ford in the fire” and “The Beginning”, the actress moved to Lenkom. And already with her first role in this theater, Nele in “Til” by Grigory Gorin and Mark Zakharov, she showed that a star of the first magnitude appeared on the theater field.

Churikova was one of the few really big actresses who were equal on screen and on stage. None of the arts in her person was fueled by the glory inherited in the other.

The reason for this was that the concept of “role range” was not applicable to Churikova at all. Usually it is inherent in everyone, even the undisputed celebrities and favorites of fate. It was definitely not applicable to Inna Churikova. Yes, of course, she had more significant theatrical roles and less significant ones. But it was impossible to say about any role: he plays “not his own”.

An ugly woman and a beauty, a sorceress and a simpleton, a winner or a vanquished, a Shakespearean heroine or a Soviet housewife tortured by everyday life, a heroine of a frivolous French comedy or Chekhov’s Arkadina, a commissar from Optimistic Tragedy – Churikova was equally convincing in any genre and in the entourage of any era. She always managed to find some kind of the only true balance between the “truth of life” (whatever these words are understood at different times) and convex theatricality – and the merits of the director (be it Mark Zakharov, Gleb Panfilov or someone else) in this always was in half with her natural intuition.

In general, Churikova played on top of any formulas and any possible explanations. Her drawing of the role could be sharp, grotesque, or calm, even subdued. She could somewhere succumb to female sentimentality, and somewhere she could literally “douse” with impenetrable irony. But each time she reached some incomprehensible state of complete certainty of everything that happened. It seems nothing special, but the theatrical matter woven by the actress invariably showed a natural equality with life.

The combination of these qualities eventually brought Churikova to the first places in the hierarchy of talents. She was, so to speak, a consensus genius – without any feminists, as if part of each of the audience who grew up on her performances and films. And it is very natural and logical that on stage her last role was Elizabeth II in the play “Audience”, staged for his wife by the same Gleb Panfilov. Of course, here Churikova was at the height of her skills. But she didn’t just play the English queen, she fixed her own royal status in the Russian theater. Now this throne is empty, but there is no one to sit on it.

Mikhail Trofimenkov, Esther Steinbock