The feature film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" is a gold "Oscar-winning" classic of Russian cinema. Fans of this film are well aware of the wonderful actresses, actors and director who worked on this masterpiece, but hardly anyone will remember the name of the playwright and screenwriter who came up with this romantic story. And this is Valentin Konstantinovich Chernykh, a talented writer who has created in his creative life fifty scripts for films, who also wrote stories, novels, short stories, a teacher and a public figure.
Biography facts. War childhood
Valentin Konstantinovich Chernykh was born in the city of Pskov on March 12, 1935. His father was a military commissar of the 213rd Pskov regiment, and in 1941, when the Great Patriotic War began, he and his wife and two sons were in the Belarusian city of Grodno, not far from the border with Poland. The Nazis began to bomb the city; Valentine's father said: “This is war!”, got up and left forever. Only 60 years later, relatives learned about how heroically he died surrounded, without surrendering to the enemy. Mother with six-year-old Valentin and his two-year-old younger brother went to the Pskov region. We walked only in the dark to protect ourselves from attacks from the air. Horror, fear, uncertainty - all these emotions are forever engraved in the memory of the boy. Especially sunk into the soul of the case when an enemy car caught up with the refugees on the road, and several Germans almost took his mother, a very beautiful woman, with them - she miraculously managed to fight back.
Already in his school years, Valentin Chernykh showed literary talent and a penchant for writing. An interesting fact: his first works were written under the influence of the stories of a relative who was at the front and was taken prisoner in France. And here Chernykh - a boy who grew up in a village and does not know anything about other countries - showed his imagination and composed a story about a prisoner of war and his adventures in France. Moreover, he sent this story not to anyone, but to Konstantin Simonov himself, an outstanding writer and war correspondent. And Simonov answered, or rather, advised the novice writer to write always only about what he knew and saw himself. And Chernykh tried all his life to be guided by this principle.
Years of study
After leaving school, Valentin was drafted into the army as a mechanic of a fighter regiment stationed in the Primorsky Territory. Demobilized, he went to Kamchatka, then to Chukotka, then to Magadan, where he lived for three whole years. Here, in 1958, he began working for the Magadansky Komsomolets newspaper.
In the late 1950s, Chernykh left for Moscow. Here he received a secondary specialized education at the School of Factory Apprenticeship (FZU), got a job at a shipyard as an assembler. In parallel with the development of a working specialty, the young man continued to engage in literary creativity, was a freelance author of various newspapers.
In 1961, Chernykh entered the screenwriting department at the Lunacharsky VGIK. He considered himself an "over-age student", since he was already 26 years old, he had a wife, Margarita, and a son, George (Gosha). At VGIK, Chernykh met his future second wife, graduate student Lyudmila Kozhinova; relations with her brought him many problems at that time - for "immoral behavior" he was not accepted into the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he had to transfer to the correspondence department and even leave Moscow for some time.
The beginning of a creative career
While still a student, Chernykh wrote the script for the documentary "Land without God" (1963), which was filmed. In 1967, Valentin Chernykh graduated from VGIK and received a screenwriter diploma. The next year, 1968, he graduated from courses for television directors, for some time he worked in the program "Time". And in 1973 he made his debut as a screenwriter in fictional cinema: director Alexei Sakharov made the film "A Man in His Place" starring Vladimir Menshov, the future director of "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears." At the Mosfilm film studio, a competition was announced for the best script dedicated to village life, and Chernykh, as an expert on this life, took part in the competition. His script was approved, the film turned out to be successful - about a young ambitious collective farm chairman, an enthusiast and an innovator. The picture was shown at the Alma-Ata Film Festival in 1973, and Menshov was even awarded as the best male role.
Valentin Chernykh's creative activity was extremely intense. For 40 years of his work - from 1972 to 2012 - he wrote 50 screenplays, that is, for each year there was more than one script! According to the directors with whom he worked, Chernykh was a unique screenwriter and a very responsible person: he was on the set before the release of the film - he was present on the set, at artistic councils, sat with cameramen and directors in the editing room.
"Moscow does not believe in tears" and other films
In 1976, Valentin Chernykh met again on the set with Vladimir Menshov while working on the film "Own Opinion", which was filmed by Yuliy Karasik. Menshov was also in the lead role here, but by that time he had already managed to work as a director, having filmed the picture "The Joke". Chernykh obviously appreciated Menshov's directorial work, because he offered him a new script, or rather, a story about three girls from the provinces who came to Moscow and tried to build their personal life and career here. Menshov liked the plot as a whole, especially the moment when the main character sets the alarm and goes to bed, and wakes up to his ringing after 20 years. However, I wanted to modify or redo a lot of the script - for example, instead of one episode, it was decided to make two, and this required writing many new scenes and creating new storylines. There were plenty of disputes and even quarrels between the scriptwriter and the director during the work. Despite this, they both maintained a sense of gratitude and mutual respect. Later, Chernykh and Menshov even planned to make a sequel to Moskva, discussed some options, but these plans were not destined to come true. Meanwhile, the film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" was released in 1980 and became a cinematic bestseller, and not only in the USSR, but also abroad - to the surprise of even the filmmakers themselves, it was awarded the US Film Academy Oscar as the best foreign motion picture. According to rumors, President Ronald Reagan watched this film eight times in 1985 before his visit to the USSR in order to understand the peculiarities of the Russian soul.
Among the fifty films shot according to the scripts of Valentin Konstantinovich, it is necessary to note "The Taste of Bread" (1979, about the development of the virgin lands, the author of the script was awarded the USSR State Prize), "Marry the Captain" (1985, film studio "Lenfilm"), "Soothe my sorrows "(1989, Valentin Chernykh starred as an actor in the role of a driver, Luba's lover), films directed by Yevgeny Matveev" To love in Russian "1, 2 and 3 (1995, 1996, 1999)," Children of the Arbat "(2004, TV series based on the trilogy by Anatoly Rybakov), "Own" (2004, the film received "Nika" and "Golden Eagle" in the nomination "Best Screenplay"), "Brezhnev" (2005), "Four Days in May" (2011, the last film by Chernykh, dedicated to the events of the Great Patriotic War).
Pedagogical and social activities
In 1981, Valentin Konstantinovich came to work at his alma mater - he became a teacher, professor at VGIK. A student script workshop worked under his leadership.
As a public figure, he was a member of such organizations as the Union of Cinematographers of Russia, the Union of Journalists of Russia, and the Union of Writers of Russia. In order to develop domestic cinema, as well as to support young screenwriters, Valentin Chernykh, together with his fellow screenwriters Valery Fried and Eduard Volodarsky, created and headed the Slovo studio at Mosfilm in 1987. And in 2014 - on the anniversary of the death of Valentin Konstantinovich - the V. Chernykh "Word" award was established in such nominations as "best literary script", "best television debut", "best full-length debut". Ludmila Kozhinova, the widow of Valentin Chernykh, became the chairman and co-founder of the Expert Council of this award.
Screenwriter Valentin Chernykh made a significant contribution to Soviet and Russian cinema. His merits were appreciated by the state: in 1980 he was awarded the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR with the presentation of the State Prize, in 1985 he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and in 2010 - the Order of Friendship.
Valentin Konstantinovich Chernykh died on August 6, 2012 in the Moscow Botkin Hospital - his heart could not stand it. He was 77 years old. The grave of the screenwriter is located at the Vagankovskoye cemetery in Moscow.
Personal life
Having entered VGIK, Valentin Chernykh met Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Kozhinova, who was in graduate school. Lyudmila (her maiden name Ruskol) was 5 years older - she was born in 1930 in a Jewish family, at the age of 19 she married the publicist Vadim Kozhinov and gave birth to a daughter Elena, divorced him, after 10 years of marriage, but kept the name of the former for the rest of her life. husband. At the time of their acquaintance, Kozhinova was free, and Chernykh was still married to his first wife. That is why their romance caused a lot of discontent on the part of the leadership of the institute and forced Chernykh to transfer to correspondence courses and leave Moscow. The relationship ended, but Lyudmila decided to fight for love: she wrote letters to Valentin, sent cigarettes in parcels. In 1964 they got married and lived in marriage until the death of Valentin Konstantinovich.
Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Kozhinova is a member of the Screenwriters Guild, a film critic, an assistant professor of the Department of Screenwriting at VGIK. The spouses Cherny - Kozhinov did not have common children, which both regretted. For many years they had a dog named Nyura of the Giant Schnauzer breed, a fragment from the life of which Chernykh embodied in the script for the film "Raising Cruelty in Women and Dogs" (1992).
