Mimino

Valiko Mizandari, nicknamed Mimino ^{[~ 1]} - is a pilot of the Mi-2 helicopter of local airlines. He lives with his grandfather, unmarried sister and her schoolboy son in a mountain village in the vicinity of the small town of Telavi , where he carries passengers and cargo from all around. Valiko helicopter, allegedly from theft, his nephew fastens a chain to a heavy log. Once at a Tbilisi airport, he meets his former classmate, who flies on international lines on the Tu-144 . With him, Mimino sees a beautiful stewardess who wins his heart at first sight. Desiring to conquer the inaccessible Larisa Ivanovna, he goes to Moscow with the intention of getting into large aviation.

In Moscow, Valiko, with a letter from Aunt Nina, a relative of his friend Kukush, through the opera singer Sinitsyna, settles in the Rossiya Hotel under the guise of a participant in a conference of endocrinologists . By chance, the driver from Dilijan Ruben Khachikyan, who arrived in Moscow for a new dump truck, is in the same room with him. Despite the skirmish on the first day, friendly relations are established between them. For one evening, friends on a Caucasian scale spend all the money in a restaurant. But to meet with Larisa Ivanovna Valiko fails. First, she does not come to a restaurant, and then the younger sister of the stewardess, intercepting the telephone receiver, rudely insults Valiko. Soon friends are evicted from the hotel: it turns out that Ruben, due to confusion, got a place reserved for his namesake, professor of endocrinology Khachikyan (Rubik was initially flattered by the warm welcome), and Mimino was also expelled from the hotel for the fact that he was not completely legal at the hotel .

To get hold of at least some amount of money, friends are trying to sell tires bought by Rubik for a neighbor on the Zhiguli . However, once in a potential buyer’s apartment, Valiko suddenly behaves in an incomprehensible way: he organizes a pogrom in his apartment, for which he falls into the police. At the trial, he refuses to give at least some reasonable explanations for his seemingly strange behavior. And only thanks to the indifference of the lawyer - a young girl leading her first case - it turns out that Valiko thus wanted to take revenge on his long-time foe, who had once deceived his sister and left her alone with the child (he refused to testify in court, so as not to compromise sister). Valiko gets off with a fine of 50 rubles and damages. But during the trials, he turns 35 years old, and this becomes the reason for the refusal to accept for retraining.

Frustrated by the failure, Mimino is about to fly home. However, by chance at the airport, he meets with Ivan Sergeyevich Volokhov, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War . Taking Valiko as the son of his deceased Georgian fellow soldier with the same surname, Volokhov decides to help Mimino through his front-line friend, now a high-ranking aviation official. In the office, all three understand that a misunderstanding has occurred. However, the leader, a former front-line soldier, still shows good nature and helps Valiko, who lost his father in the war, finally realize his dream.

Mimino becomes the pilot of an international airline. In one of the flights, he again meets Larisa Ivanovna, who apologizes to him for the indecent behavior of her sister. However, foreign beauties no longer please Mimino. Now he increasingly recalls his native mountains, his village, the dog Zarbazan, his beloved nephew and old grandfather. The love for their native places is emphasized by the filmmakers with an expressive episode. While in Germany, Mimino tries to reach his hometown and is mistakenly connected to Tel Aviv. On the other end of the wire he hears Georgian speech - it turns out he got into the apartment of a former resident of Kutaisi, now living in Israel. He asks Valiko about Georgia and cries.

The end of the film is symbolic: the Mimino helicopter again stands on a joke, tied with a chain, in his village.

• Vakhtang Kikabidze (credited as Buba Kikabidze ) - Valiko (Valentin Konstantinovich) Mizandari, a pilot nicknamed "Mimino"
• Frunzik Mkrtchyan - Rubik (Ruben Vartanovich) Khachikyan, truck driver
• Elena Proklova - Larisa Ivanovna Komarova, stewardess
• Evgeny Leonov - Ivan Sergeevich Volokhov, war veteran
• Kote Daushvili - Grandfather Valiko
• Ruslan Mikaberidze - Givi Ivanovich Goglidze, the commander of the flight squad of Telavi Airport
• Zakro Sakhvadze - Varlaam, Valiko's nephew
• Hippolytus Hvichia - Kukush, a teller from Telavi
• Marina Dyuzheva (credited as Maria Dyuzheva ) - Svetlana Georgievna, attorney
• Rusiko Morcheladze - Lali, a rural teacher in love with Mimino
• Archil Gomiashvili - Nugzar Papishvili, the victim
• Leonid Kuravlev - Professor Khachikyan
• Valentina Titova - wife of Sinitsyna
• Savely Kramarov - sentenced to five years at the entrance to the court
• Vladimir Basov - Rodion Sinitsyn, opera singer
• Borislav Brondukov - a passenger in a helicopter, weighed on the scales
• Natia Kolelishvili - actress in Indian cinema
• Zaza Kolelishvili - Shepherd
• Olga Tarabaeva - Veronika, sister of Larisa Ivanovna (not in the credits)
• Viktor Kryuchkov - a passerby in the Moscow courtyard (not in the credits)
• Lyudmila Gavrilova - administrator at the conference of endocrinologists
• Marina Shvydkaya ( credited as M. Polyak ) - flight attendant Katya Ryabtseva
• Artyom Karapetyan - reads voiceover
• Georgy Danelia - crew commander of the Tbilisi-Moscow aircraft in the hall of Vnukovo Airport (episode)

• Stage Director: George Danelia
• Screenwriters: Revaz Gabriadze , Victoria Tokareva , George Danelia
• Chief Operator: Anatoly Petritsky
• The main artists: Boris Nemechek , Eleanor Nemechek
• Composer: Gia Kancheli
• Sound engineer: Evgeny Fedorov
• Director: Yuri Kushneryov
• Operator: Yu. Yakovlev
• Installation: T. Egorycheva
• Costumes: O. Kruchinina
• Makeup: M. Alyautdinova
• Songs to verses by Peter Gruzinsky , Evgeny Yevtushenko , Robert Rozhdestvensky
• Director of the picture: Valery Gandrabura

• 1977 - Gold Prize at the X Moscow International Film Festival (George Danelia)
• 1978 - Prize for the best comedy film at the XI All-Union Film Festival in Yerevan (George Danelia)
• 1978 - USSR State Prize (George Danelia, Vakhtang Kikabidze, Frunzik Mkrtchyan)
• 1979 - Golden Lacheno Prize at the 19th Avellino International Film Festival (George Danelia) ^[6]

Script Preparation

The plot of the film goes back to the story of a pilot who tied his helicopter at night to a tree, told by Danelia to his friend - screenwriter Rezo Gabriadze. However, the director was not going to shoot this. In co-authorship with Victoria Tokareva, a script was written about a village girl in love with a pilot playing a trumpet and composing poetry ; Preparatory work for filming was going on, which was a month away. But when the picture was already put into production, his friend, the famous Azerbaijani playwright and writer Maksud Ibragimbekov, came to visit the director. After asking Danelia about what he was working on and listening to his answer, Ibragimbekov reminded his friend of a story he had once told about a rural helicopter pilot who, returning from a flight, ties his car to a chain and locks it, noticing that the story of a pilot tying a helicopter to a tree is more interesting ^[10] . After that, the director, according to his own statement, realized that he would not make a film about the trumpeter ^[11] .

The next day, Danelia called Gabriadze in Tbilisi and he immediately flew to Moscow. The three of them - Danelia, Gabriadze and Tokareva - went to the Bolshevo creative house and began to hurriedly write a new script. A month before the shooting, all that was known was that the film would have a helicopter, a chain, a castle and Kikabidze in the title role. The Georgian part of the script was written by Danelia, the rest - by Tokarev and Gabriadze ^[12] . The second director, Yuri Kushneryov, brought the finished materials to Moscow, where the film crew worked: they prepared costumes, decoration, budget, and chose places for full-scale shooting. As a result, the first version of the script was ready for the start of filming, which was subsequently rewritten and updated ^[3] .

A number of scenes and names fell into the script of life. So, the main character was named in honor of the sculptor Valerian Mizandari, teacher of the scriptwriter of the film Rezo Gabriadze ^{[13] [14]} . Earlier, the name Mizandari Danelia gave one of the voice-over characters of the film " Do not Cry! ". The scene with the lawyer was exactly written off from the story that happened to Danelia's daughter, Svetlana. When she, a young lawyer, was left face to face with a repeat offender, he began to prompt the frightened girl what to do and what questions to ask. In honor of Svetlana Georgievna Danelia, the lawyer in the film was named Svetlana Georgievna ^[15] .

Casting

According to Danelia, Vakhtang Kikabidze is one of two (along with Yevgeny Leonov ) of his favorite actors ^[16] . The fact that Kikabidze will play the main role was known from the very beginning, and the very role of Mimino was written specifically for him ^[7] . According to the recollections of the cameraman Anatoly Petritsky , there was almost no film test - famous actors already familiar to Danelia were shot in the picture, and only a dog had to be found for the role of Zarbazan ^[7] (whose name is translated from Georgian as “gun” ^[17] ). For this role, a nice and well-groomed dog named Chapa was brought from Moscow, but she did not arrange a director. A suitable mongrel was accidentally met on the street in Telavi ^[7] and immediately taken to the set. The dog turned out to be homeless and subsequently taken to Moscow by the director of the painting, Valery Gandrabur ^[17] .

The friend of the protagonist - the Armenian driver - was played by Frunzik Mkrtchyan . It is often said that this role is the best in the career of an actor ^{[18] [12]} . Mkrtchyan will get into the film or not, the coin literally decided. While working on the script, when all the scenes in Georgia were ready and the plot came to Moscow, the question arose - did he live alone in a hotel or with someone, and if with someone, then with whom: with an endocrinologist from Sverdlovsk (Leonov) or a driver from Dilijan (Mkrtchyan). It turned out that both options are very interesting, and decided to choose a specific option by tossing a coin. Mkrtchyan fell ^[18] .

• “Day comes, day leaves ...” - music by Gia Kancheli, lyrics by Evgeny Yevtushenko and Robert Rozhdestvensky . It sounds at the beginning of the film on the credits . The song is performed by Vakhtang Kikabidze. The melody of the song appears periodically throughout the film.
• “Chito-gvrito, chito-margalito ...” ( Georgian ჩიტო, გვრიტო, ჩიტო-მარგალიტო - “bird, small bird”; “gvriti” გვრიტი - turtledove ; “margaliti” მარგალიტი - pearls; thus, literal translation - pearl bird ”) - music by Gia Kancheli, lyrics by Pyotr Gruzinsky . The main musical theme of the film. The song is performed by Vakhtang Kikabidze. After the release of the film, this song gained great popularity, although Kancheli did not consider it any outstanding achievement in his work ^[19] . Moreover, the composer said that he would not write this composition at all if he knew that it would be so firmly associated with it ^[20] .

Initially, it was planned to include several musical numbers in the film, for which phonograms had already been recorded. But when they started filming the first such scene, Kikabidze realized that it looked unnatural for his hero - a restrained and taciturn mountaineer, and Danelia deleted all musical scenes from the script ^[16] .

According to the memoirs of Vakhtang Kikabidze, eight episodes were cut out of the film ^[21] . In one of the episodes cut out, when Mimino and Rubik enter the hotel’s elevator, there are two Chinese people who look like each other like twins . Seeing the incoming, the Chinese say to each other in Chinese (with Russian subtitles): "These Russians are all on one face." Also, scenes associated with one of the heroes of the film, the village blacksmith, were cut out of the film, and the final film, which had to be remounted, was completely cut out ^{[21] [22]} . As planned by Danelia, the scene had a sequel, which had to be cut from the film. In it, the flight attendant Katya agreed that Mimino jumped out of the plane, and he jumped, fell on a slope near his native village, rolled down from it and met a familiar shepherd where such a dialogue took place:

“Hey wait! What is this behind you? ”The shepherd asked. Valiko looked, and his pants were torn, because he had moved down the mountain. And said:
- Look to the left. What do you see?
- The mountains. - answered the shepherd.
- Look to the right, what do you see?
- The mountains.
- Upstairs.
- The sun.
- Way down.
- The river.

- Such beauty is around, and where are you looking?

There is an episode in the film where Mimino tries to call from a foreign city to Telavi , and he is connected to Tel Aviv . In the light of the relations of the Soviet Union with Israel, this episode could be considered seditious. Therefore, the director was forced to make one copy of the film without talking to Tel Aviv for the film festival, but this episode was left in copies for hire. In his memoirs, “Tostuyuschiy drinks to the dregs”, Danelia recalled how he later bought a copy shown at the festival from the projectionist without making a call to Tel Aviv, “he cut it into small pieces with pleasure” and threw it away. Another episode in which an emigrant from Tel Aviv calls Kukush to Telavi was cut out without a trace ^[23] .

Деревня, в которой живёт семья Мизандари, снималась в сёлах Омало ^[24] и Шенако .

Сцена суда снималась в здании Хамовнического районного суда Москвы, расположенном в 7-м Ростовском переулке ^[25] .

К 30-летию картины в Москве на Чистых прудах рядом с домом, где находится квартира Данелии ^[26] , планировалось установить памятник героям фильма. В декабре 2006 года эту идею одобрила Комиссия по культуре Московской думы ^{[27] [28]} . Однако в марте 2007 года комиссия по фундаментальному искусству при Мосгордуме предложение единогласно отклонила, сославшись на то, что район Чистых прудов перенасыщен памятниками ^[29] .

5 июля 2011 года памятник работы Армена Варданяна , изображающий Валико, Рубика и Волохова, был установлен на родине Рубика — в Дилижане ^{[30] [31]} . На открытии памятника присутствовал Вахтанг Кикабидзе, единственный из трёх актёров, живущий на тот момент.

По заявлению министра культуры Грузии Ника Руруа, «памятник подчёркивает искреннюю дружбу людей на человеческом уровне». Также он сообщил, что такой же памятник будет открыт и в Грузии ^[32] . 14 октября 2011 года памятник героям фильма и режиссёру был установлен в Тбилиси на Авлабарской площади. На церемонию открытия пришло большое количество зрителей, среди которых были гости из Армении, Белоруссии, Литвы. Прибыли и официальные лица: супруга Михаила Саакашвили — Сандра Рулофс , руководство города, депутаты парламента. Также присутствовал мэр Дилижана Армен Сантросян, который присвоил Вахтангу Кикабидзе звание почётного гражданина города ^[26] .

В 2007 году в Московском музее современного искусства был установлен памятник героям комедии «Мимино» работы Зураба Церетели .

Comments

Sources

• Г. Данелия. Тостуемый пьёт до дна. — М. : Эксмо, 2011. — 352 с. — (Жизнеописания знаменитых людей). — 3100 экз. — ISBN 978-5-699-53985-7 .

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