One of the best directorial works of Eldar Ryazanov is considered to be the film "Station for Two". Both Russian and foreign critics to this day highly appreciate the unique combination of both the cast and the scenery, music, with the general style of this film.
The plot of the film "Station for two"
"A Station for Two" is an unusually wise, simple-minded and slightly naive picture about the life of provincial women of that time. The main character, a representative of the intelligentsia, is shown as the direct opposite of the heroine. Both their opposition and the manifestation of feelings between them constitute a storyline that does not allow the viewer to be distracted from the screen throughout the film.
The title of the film reflects its essence, because the narrative in it is about two human destinies, about an amazing combination of circumstances that linked two lives together. And the station in the plot of the picture is not only a place of action, but also a reflection of uncertainty, understatement and limited space, time, and possibilities. For the main character of the film, the station also became a kind of starting point for a new period of life, a place where he saw the world around him and himself in a completely different way, where he rethought his role and his place in the world.
Very little time is allotted to the main characters to sort out their feelings, make a fateful decision and radically change their lives, and without having the opportunity to do so. And making a choice in the whirlwind of station life is not so easy.
Where the film "Station for Two" was filmed
According to the plot of the picture, the action takes place in the fictional provincial town of Zastupinsk, lost somewhere in the Voronezh region. But the shooting of the film took place in the then Leningrad and in Moscow.
Restaurant and station scenes were filmed at the Rizhsky station in the capital, and street shots are from the outskirts of Leningrad. Rizhsky railway station was chosen as a film location because it was and remains the most uncrowded railway station, since it is located not on a passing branch of the railway, but on a dead end. That is why the scenes with the trains passing by had to be filmed at the Lasinoostrovskaya station, which is located within the city of Moscow.
The Vitebsk railway station of Leningrad also got into the frame - it was in its waiting room that the scene was filmed where the heroine Gurchenko masterly varied in high heels, and even with a tray in her hands.
Scenes of the maximum security colony were filmed on the territory of a correctional institution for juvenile offenders in the city of Iksha, near Moscow. At first, the inmates of the colony did not accept Oleg Basilashvili and tried in every possible way to "annoy" him, but after the actor began to share his "ration" with them during the filming of dinner and pronounced the name of one of them in the frame, the relationship improved.
Cast
The work of the cast of the film received the highest praise from critics. The work of Gurchenko, for example, is remarkable in that she did not reward her heroine with excessive provincialism, managed to show her naivety and simplicity so that they became her winning qualities. For Basilashvili, the role in this film has become a landmark, a kind of visiting card, an example of how multifaceted and versatile his acting talent is.
The roles of the second plan went with the director's light hand to actors with a reputation already established by that time - Nikita Mikhalkov, Nonna Mordyukova, Tatyana Dogileva, Stanislav Sadalsky and many others.
