True friends (film)

Once upon a time three young comrades lived on a Moscow outskirts: Sasha “The Cat's Barin”, Borka “Chizhik” and Vaska “Turkey”. Floating on an old boat on the river Yauza and fantasizing about traveling along the big river, they swore to each other someday to meet and realize their dream.

It's been 30 years. Boris Chizhov became a famous Moscow surgeon , Alexander Lapin - a professor - livestock breeder , Vasily Nestratov - academician of architecture . Remembering the promise made to each other once, Lapin gathers friends and the three of them go down the river on a log raft.

In this journey, they undergo a lot of adventures. For Lapin, the journey also turns out to be happy: he meets a woman he has long loved and who loves him. Nestratov, having gone through all the vicissitudes, unwittingly change their attitude towards life, diminishing the nomenklatura arrogance. As for Chizhov, he shows his talent as a surgeon: in one of the hospitals, Katia rescues the girl by performing a craniocerebral operation.

• Alexander Borisov - Alexander Fedorovich Lapin, breeder-breeder and professor
• Boris Chirkov - Boris Petrovich Chizhov, neurosurgeon
• Vasily Merkuryev - Vasily Vasilievich Nestratov, academician of architecture
• Alexey Gribov - Vitaly Nekhoda, Head of Construction
• Lilia Gritsenko - Natalia Kalinina, livestock breeder
• Lyudmila Shagalova - Katya Sintsova, Construction Technician
• Alexey Pokrovsky - junior police lieutenant
• Lyudmila Genika - Masha, doctor
• Yuri Sarantsev - Seryozha, the first mate of "Ermak"
• Anatoly Dudorov - Deputy Nehody
• Nikolay Smorchkov - Alexey Mazaev, secretary of the Komsomol organization
• Alexander Lebedev - sailor from “Ermak” (film debut)
• Gheorghe Gheorghiu - Nestratova's Assistant (in credits like “ G. Gheorgheu ”)
• Vera Volskaya - Simochka, Nestratova's secretary
• Vladimir Ratomsky - an elderly sailor on a barge (in the credits as “ V. Rotomsky ”)
• Gabriel Belov - an old man on a barge
• Mikhail Pugovkin - Head of the Water Club
• Yuri Leonidov - 1st Sailor
• Vasily Kornukov - 2nd Sailor
• Konstantin Nassonov - General Isachenko
• Georgiy Gumilevsky - shoe seller
• Vsevolod Sanaev - Visitor Nehody
• Vladimir Andreev - 1st Komsomol member
• Sergey Yurtaykin - 2nd Komsomol member
• Claudia Kozlenkova - nurse
• Alexander Zhukov - grandfather on a barge
• Ivan Kosykh - the guy on the barge
• Alevtina Rumyantseva - Marina, a girl on a barge (not in credits)
• Elena Savitskaya - passenger ship (not in the credits)
• Vladimir Lepko - passenger ship (not in the credits)
• Margarita Zharova - secretary Nekhody (not in credits)
• Konstantin Tyrtov - doctor (not in credits)
• Alexandra Denisova - Vaska's mother (not in credits)
• Georgy Budarov - the viewer (not in the credits)
• George Svetlani - episode
• Seraphim Choline - episode
• Valery Durov - episode
• Alexander Tolstykh - episode (not in credits)
• B. Zhavoronkov - episode
• V. Butylin - episode
• M. Smirnov - episode

• Alexander Borisov, Vasily Merkuryev and Boris Chirkov - “Boat” (“Swam, the boat swung along the Yauza River ...”), guitar - Sergey Sorokin . Music - Tikhon Khrennikov ^[2] , words - Mikhail Matusovsky ;
• Alexander Borisov - “ Lapin 's Romance ” (“What is so heart, what is so heart disturbed ...”), guitar - Sergey Sorokin. Music - Tikhon Khrennikov ^[2] , words - Mikhail Matusovsky;
• Alexander Borisov, Vasily Merkuryev and Boris Chirkov - “River Song” (“We will tell you how we got ...”) in the rhythm of the classical mazurka. Music - Tikhon Khrennikov ^[2] , words - Mikhail Matusovsky;
• Alexander Borisov, Vasily Merkuryev and Boris Chirkov “True Friends” (Song of Friendship) (“And it happened in the hour of alarm, on a gloomy day, covered all the roads of friendship with light…”). Music - Tikhon Khrennikov, words - Mikhail Matusovsky.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, music and film songs were released on records by the Leningrad Accord factory (D-003482 and others). In the mid-1960s - the firm " Melody ".

• Script writers: Alexander Galich (in 1970–1980 removed from movie captions), Konstantin Isaev
• Director: Mikhail Kalatozov
• Operator: Mark Magidson
• Artist: Alexey Parkhomenko
• Composer: Tikhon Khrennikov
• Lyrics: Mikhail Matusovsky
• Sound producer: Valery Popov

In the film “True Friends”, film director Mikhail Kalatozov first turned to the comedy genre ^{[3] [4]} . It was decided to film the film “On a raft” by Alexander Galich and Konstantin Isayev , presented at Mosfilm in the spring of 1952 and sent for processing. While working on the film, the script also underwent a change. For example, initially there was no such character as the bureaucrat of Nekhod, played by Alexei Gribov , and the character of Vasily Merkuriev - academician of architecture Nestratov - was an astronomer. By the way, the role of Nestratov was initially intended for Nikolai Cherkasov , but he refused after reading the script. The scene of the interrogation of Nestratova by a policeman during the filming stretched out, turning from a minute episode into a major comic scene. Boris Chirkov asked Kalatozov to invite his wife, actress Lyudmila Genika , to the role of the doctor of the rural hospital Masha, especially for which an additional scene of the operation was added to the script ^{[3] [4] [5]} .

Filming began in Moscow in the summer of 1953 and ended in October of the same year in Rostov-on-Don . The scene with the main characters in childhood was filmed on the Yauza River at the Elektrozavod, before the river bed was laid ^[6] . After all the Moscow episodes were filmed, the film group moved to the Kaluga region for field shooting of the river trip, which took place on the Oka in the vicinity of Tarusa . With the arrival of the autumn rains, the film group headed for Rostov-on-Don, the weather was clear and still warm in summer. The raft, on which the main characters sailed, was carefully disassembled when moving, each log was numbered, and on arrival at the new place it was carefully restored. In October, in Rostov-on-Don, it was also getting cold, and the actors who starred in summer clothes in a piercing wind had to pretend that they were very warm ^{[3] [4]} . The film was supposed to be called “Old Friends”, but after the end of the filming, at the request of the playwright Leonid Malyugin - the author of the play of the same name - the name was changed to “True Friends” ^[5] .

The film was shot on an imported Kodak film, which had good color reproduction, which made the picture quite colorful ^[3] .

The film became one of the first cinematic swallows of the approaching “ Thaw ” ^[7] : according to Boris Chirkov, the actors and the director tried to prevent “those who stuck into the practice of lacquering cinema, embellishing reality” ^[8] . At the same time, according to A. Galich, the film was subjected to numerous corrections for the sake of censorship, becoming less sharp and ridiculous ^[5] . The picture was popular with the audience and was one of the leaders in the rental of 1954.

Many replicas, entire scenes of conversations and disputes of three friends are spontaneous improvisations of three major cinema masters, sometimes giving rise to an amazing sense of naturalness of what is happening. To make it easier for the actors to communicate in the frame, the heroes of Merkuriev, Chirkov and Borisov received the names and patronymics of the performers of the roles: Vasily Vasilyevich (Nestratov), ​​Boris Petrovich (Chizhov) and Alexander Fedorovich (Lapin).

Songs performed by an actor trio became a true decoration of the film - high technique of actor singing allows decomposing songs into traditional Russian three voices, and the perfectly recognizable voices of Boris Chirkov, Alexander Borisov and Vasily Merkuriev are perfectly combined with each other.

• The big prize to Mikhail Kalatozov at the International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary in 1954.

In the 1990s, the film was released on videotape by the Close-up Film Association. In the 2000s, the film was restored and released on DVD .

In 2016, the high-resolution film became available for free viewing on the official youtube channel of the Mosfilm Concern.

• "True friends" on the site "Encyclopedia of the national cinema"
• The film "True friends" in the online cinema "Mosfilm"