Prize (film, 1974)

The action takes place in the USSR in the 1970s. The film is solved in a chamber style, and almost all the action takes place in one room.

The ordinary meeting of the party committee of the construction trust turns into a serious conversation about the problems of the planned economy, and simple brigadier Vasily Potapov begins it.

Potapov and his entire team (17 people) refuse the prize, which was issued according to the results of the year to all employees of trust No. 101 for overfulfillment of the plan . The fact is that last year, the leadership of the trust petitioned the commander in chief to adjust the established plan “for objective reasons”. The plan was shortened, thanks to which this year the trust exceeded it and even took third place in the social competition .

Team leader Potapov is a fan of work, cannot endure downtime and disorder, arguing that all the reasons for the reduction of the plan are internal, and they could be overcome by the trust itself with the proper organization of labor. Several participants in the meeting, and first of all the manager of the Batarsev trust, at first try to put the "rebel" in its place. However, party organizer Solomakhin supported Potapov’s speech, intending to sort out the situation.

Further it turns out that the foreman carefully prepared for his demarche. His team, with the help of the planning department employee Dina Milenina, carried out a deep economic analysis and substantively substantiated that the trust had no objective reasons for shortening the plan, and that it could fulfill it. Potapov makes a proposal - to return the prize received by the trust dishonestly and illegally.

Speech by Potapov encourages each participant in the meeting to express their principled position. Suddenly, the meeting is interrupted by a phone call. It turns out that just seven members of the Potapov brigade still received the award. Drowning, the team leader silently leaves the meeting. The rest of the Communists are also going to disperse, but the party committee secretary Solomakhin stops them. According to him, the departure of Potapov, in principle, does not change anything. The problem still remained, and Solomakhin put to the vote a decision on the rejection of the annual award by the whole trust. As a result, by a majority of votes, including Batarsev, Potapov's proposal was accepted.

Despite the fact that more than three quarters of the entire film is occupied by the scene of the party committee meeting, the creators of the picture decided to shoot not in the studio pavilion , but in the scenery , built on nature with a view of the existing construction site. This allowed to increase the reliability of the action, which was preferred to the traditional technology of shooting such scenes ^[1] . The 65 square meter glass roof of the decoration protected the interior from rain and could be covered with shades and diffusers depending on the required nature of the lighting. When creating the scenery , the director of photography sought to embody the principles of the Edison Studio " Black Maria ". Due to the busyness of actor Evgeny Leonov in other shootings that took place in Riga , the scenery had to be built not in the southern regions with a large number of sunny days, but in the Baltic states ^[2] . If necessary, additional illumination during the shooting of the "evening" scenes were used arc spotlights "KPD-50", installed on the forests around the perimeter of the pavilion. Various combinations of natural and artificial lighting created the effect of different times of the day of a protracted meeting ^[3] .

Additional dynamics was given to the image using a special camera crane and remote control of the panoramic camera head using a TV . This allowed the actors to improvise more without being constrained by the composition of a static frame ^[4] . A separate difficulty was the employment of key actors: Leonov, Dzhigarkhanyan, Sergachev and Gluzsky, who set the film crew tough conditions for the timing of the shoot. Thanks to a clear schedule and preliminary preparation, the whole role of Leonov was filmed in six days, and the rest of the actors were also captured during short trips. Entirely the entire cast for a few general shots was present on the set for only two hours. As a result, due to the successful organization of work, the filming period of the picture took 59 days ^[5] .

• scriptwriter: Alexander Gelman
• Stage Director: Sergey Mikaelyan
• Chief Operator: Vladimir Chumak
• Artists: Boris Burmistrov , Mikhail Ivanov
• sound engineer: K. Lashkov
• Director: V. Tomah
• Operators: V. Komarov, A. Syagin
• Editor: O. Amosova
• Editor: A. Immortal
• Costume Designer: T. Mileant
• Make-up artist: L. Ryzhova
• Set Designer: M. Gerasimov
• assistants:

Director - S. Nikitin, M. Nikitin, L. Rogalyova

operator - S. Katsev, T. Plyusnina

• Director of the painting: O. Humberto.

• USSR State Prize (1976)
• Grand Prize VKF-75 in Chisinau
• Gold medal at the IFF “Gold Lacheno” in Avellino -76
• Anniversary prize of the International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary-76
• Honorary prize and diploma of the IFF color cinema in Barcelona-76
• Criticism Prize International Film Forum "Man, Labor, Creativity" in Poland (1975)

• Y. L. Butovsky. How the movie "Prize" was shot (Russian) // " Technique of Cinema and Television ": magazine. - 1975. - No. 9 . - S. 34-39 . - ISSN 0040-2249 .

• The party is closed ...