Ranevskaya was put on the conveyor – Newspaper Kommersant No. 22 (7467) dated 02/07/2023

The screening of Dmitry Petrun’s film “Ranevskaya” begins on the Kion platform. After watching the first two episodes, Mikhail Trofimenkov never received an answer to the question, what is the secret of Faina Ranevskaya, and did not hope to get it from the conveyor biopic.

By the will of evil fate, the great characteristic actress Ranevskaya is associated for the general public with supposedly witty, but, honestly, rude and vulgar aphorisms. Well, with a couple of on-screen replicas. First of all, with “Mulya, don’t make me nervous” from “The Foundling” (1939) by Tatyana Lukashevich.

The authors of Ranevskaya did not have the patience or intelligence not to insert this remark, slightly transforming it, into the second series of the biopic. Moreover, the action takes place in 1916, and Mulya, according to the script, is the caricature fiance of Faina-then-still-Feldman, well, from a very good Taganrog family. It remains to be seen that the scriptwriters will add the no less legendary replica of the housekeeper who has lost her mind, calling herself “Margaret Lvovich”, from “Spring” (1947) by Grigory Alexandrov somewhere during the Civil War in the Crimea or Ranevskaya’s collaboration with the Chamber Theater in the 1930s.

Faina, whose role is very successful – and this is so far the only success of the casting – was approached by Marietta Tsigal-Polishchuk, a charmingly absurd, stammering girl from an even better family than Muli’s. In love with the theater and personally with the great Kachalov, she escapes from Taganrog to conquer Moscow, breaks off, returns and again goes to storm Belokamennaya.

In reality, these escapades took two or three years out of almost 88 years of Ranevskaya’s life, and on the screen two episodes of eight occupy. I wonder at what pace the whole further tragicomedy of the heroine’s life will play out in order to fit in six episodes?

And her life was really a tragicomedy, irrigated with tears invisible to the world through laughter visible to the world. She acted in films very little, and only twice received dramatic roles worthy of her in Mikhail Romm’s films Pyshka (1934) and Dream (1941). She played even less in the capital’s theaters: throwing around the provinces in the 1920s will be taken out of the brackets. Obviously, with two or three theatrical exceptions, she did not play her main roles.

She was awarded the Stalin Prize three times for the devil knows what. For the role in the play by Anatoly Surov – his name was synonymous with mediocrity – “Dawn over Moscow.” Or for the role of Frau Wurst, the kidnapper of Soviet children, in the film “They Have a Motherland” (1949) by Alexander Feintsimmer and Vladimir Legoshin. The Soviet government was definitely not to blame for its fate – except perhaps its own conflict misanthropy. Her personal life remained in the shadows: she was associated with the poetess Sofya Parnok, the ballerina Ekaterina Geltser (Emilia Spivak), the actress Pavel Wolf, but who knows.

However, all these vicissitudes are ahead. So far, the “choir” surrounding Faina on the screen is working out the stereotypes of group action.

The Moscow stars of the Silver Age are revealingly discounted – especially when compared with the excellent “Vertinsky” (2021) by Avdotya Smirnova – they are decadent. The Jews of Taganrog, headed by Pope Hirsch (Semyon Strugachev), become Jews, constantly adjusting the menorah candles placed everywhere, where possible and where not. Anti-Semites are anti-Semitic, trying to savage Hirsch out of the world. The absurdity of trying to burn him alive surpasses the savagery of the plan.

And here, no matter how inappropriate questions about historical accuracy, one cannot get rid of the idea that the screenwriters did not read Ranevskaya’s biography well. Otherwise, they would have known that Taganrog was a happy Jewish monastery, where not a single pogrom happened.

Considering the absurd scene of the armed confrontation between the mysterious “communards” and the gendarmerie in 1915 – the screenwriters confused it with 1905 – the filmmakers are no better than the authors of the most clumsy Soviet film adaptations, in which episodes of the class struggle should certainly have been inserted.

After reading the list of characters in the upcoming Ranevskaya series, you understand: everything will be like in all the biopics of Soviet stars, who must certainly be presented as victims or wonderful lucky ones, and not the creators of the era. Well, for example, what will the nameless captains and colonels of the NKVD do? A clear stump, to poison a laureate of the Stalin Prizes three times. Meanwhile, among the heroes there was no place for Marshal of the Soviet Union Fyodor Tolbukhin. The only man with whom Ranevskaya seems to have had any lyrical relationship.

And, with all due respect to the authors, only the great Inna Churikova could play the riddle of Ranevskaya and played in Stanislav Govorukhin’s film “Bless the Woman” (2003). Even if her heroine was not called Ranevskaya, but Kunina.