These books laid the basis for the film “Blockade diary” about the first winter of the siege of the 41st, which made directed by Andrei Zaitsev. I was lucky to see it, and now he’s in my heart and mind close to the best, most poignant books and films about world war II. I think after the tragic frescoes by elem Klimov, “Come and see” we have not had such a powerful impact of pictures of people’s misery and at the same time, the magnitude and power of the national spirit. The film was supposed to come out in the spring, but the pandemic has mixed up the plans and now the Prime Minister plan at the beginning of 2021. Meanwhile, the first trailer, which you can see on the website “RG”. And we’re talking with the Director about how we created this unique human document.
When and how you decide to deal with the siege theme?
Andrei Zaitsev: When I was young came to Peter, always had the thought: maybe, here in this room, some kid was dying of hunger and cold. And then later in life read “the Blockade book” and realized that people need to see this – how it really is. The book was a reference to “Day star” Olga Berggolts, and it became clear that the plot of this autobiographical novel perfect for a movie: the heroine goes through the whole city one last time to see my dad. Through this Odyssey it is possible to show the blockade of Leningrad is to show the scale of the disaster. It turned out the mural, a mosaic of small plots, each with a concentration of suffering and pain.
In memory gets almost surreal image of a frozen city. It’s a bundle of artistic imagination?
Andrei Zaitsev: Is a documentary reality. I wrote the script, based on the, evidence of the Siege book and memories of Daniel Granin. And would never allow something to fantasized on the subject of blockade. It’s Holy and all that is in the film – the memories of the survivors of the blockade. And granina, and Bergholz, in the diaries of blockade survivors have a detailed description of the city in the winter of 1941, the most fierce, when the frost and famine killed so many people. Then I learned how to establish life, food became more and later shots of the street don’t look so deadly. But the first year is the worst. In December, the power went out, the operators passed the camera, and this brutal winter almost no photos or newsreels. And it was important to us, the audience saw what was Leningrad that survived described the blockade condition. Everything was icy, the snow – belt. We haven’t even been able to fully recreate – we just didn’t have much snow. In reality, it was even harder, but the memory of it still alive only in the diaries, and visually I’m almost never seen.
How did you manage to recreate the same Nevsky, turned into a snowdrift?
And��dray birds: We built the scenery, waiting for winter, but in February of 2018, there was a famous snow. It remains to remove, and then add computer graphics – so there was the Kazan Cathedral and the Savior on blood. The town that winter was empty, quiet, all covered with snow, making the streets seemed wider, and Nevsky Prospekt, the image of which also refracted through the consciousness of the heroine seems endless. Features of human consciousness in the terrible year is very important to the movie and we tried to reproduce this subjective view: the view to another planet. The siege wrote that some time ago could not imagine that tips over in the prehistoric era, during the ice age, where nothing reminds of civilization.
…And the confusion of all movements, something frozen, dreamlike.
Andrei Zaitsev: As described in the “Blockade book”: the city was compared to a frozen underwater Kingdom. All the huge Nevsky – dozen figures, all exhausted and are like ghosts. Legs were swollen, each step was given the incredible difficulty. Walked, leaning forward, as if against the wind. Face parchment color – people sat at home by the light of oil lamps, poured into them the engine oil was Cadel, face bloated, dark. From bitter cold all wrapped up from head to toe – not dismantle, man or woman. And Bergholz and Granin recalled that the face of the blockade – not emaciated, skin and bones, and swollen: the hunger filled with water, and his face was swollen, two slits for eyes. Eyes dead tired, dead, not expressing any desires. Read this and don’t need to fantasize, just trying to recreate what is described in detail. Looking for such face, such eyes, trying to immerse the actors in that condition.
Shakes the scene with the bread that is trying to take: a hoarse unintelligible cries, there’s nothing human left…
Andrei Zaitsev: Is also a real story, and she fully entered into our trailer. The caretaker carried on the sled the bread for the children. The sled on the mound rolled over right next to the queue for bread. The loaf fell out, and turn like an electric shock: losing control, people rushed to the bread. But at the last moment the man managed to shout that it to children. Exhausted and faint with hunger people came around, helped to collect and put back all the bread. As you can imagine, as they acted just the smell of food? Blockade write: who is not hungry – nothing about himself does not know. Everything can be used, but not to hunger. Each cell of the body – bones, muscles, nerves – is screaming: feed me! Turbid consciousness, you no longer control myself. By the way, first in the blockade started to die men: their bodies are less adapted to starvation. In women, future mothers, is the nature of the pledged stock, men e��Oh, and they burned for a couple of weeks, turning into living skeletons. Some lost his mind and snatched the bread from the receiving queue of the person. They were down and beaten, but they continued to frantically chew is also described in the “Blockade book”. It was all, but what is more important: the majority of the Leningraders were people shared their last piece of bread with others, knowing that you might die – it’s an incredible feat of spirit. I think that’s why we won.
How did you manage to immerse in such state actors, the extras?
Andrei Zaitsev: I chose long face. And when the crowd wrapped in these rags, and she was on the snow piled streets, as if there was a click, people saved some energy. Perhaps this is the magic of cinema: the atmosphere is worked to the dip, and went further chemical reaction. It’s all in the air and passed through the camera on film. And I saw before me a real blockade in the besieged city – was scared creeps up on the skin.
I’m only a spectator, but it was hard. And to you and the actors had to go through that.
Andrei Zaitsev: adapts: so the soldiers in the trenches quickly gets used to death, to the corpses. Lock: there is no thrill. And we are on the ground nothing had just been involved in a technically complex process. The hardest thing was to read “the Blockade book”: this concentration of suffering, I could handle no more than five pages in a row, then unbearable, on the verge of tears. And all these incredible suffering of Leningrad – as if to say: do not otmolen. Even the blockade Museum, established shortly after the war was closed, and unique evidence of the siege of life destroyed. And almost forty years in the city, survived this tragedy, nothing about it resembled: the Museum was opened only in 1989, of the artifacts little that remained. So before the siege we are in huge debt. After all, how many movies filmed about the Holocaust – and the people here also suffered and died, but the memory of them has survived to the extent in which they deserve. I really wanted to restore justice and to show how it really was.
an Amazing actress in the lead role – who is she?
Andrei Zaitsev: Olga Salamina, a very good actress. It was a crazy challenge to play someone who knows what the evening will die. Her character in the last stage of exhaustion, when do not want anything, except to go up to my father, to hug him and die. She needed every day to immerse yourself in this condition, putting on pounds of rags and quilted jackets, wading knee-deep in snow. It ran for eighty shifts, completely surrendering to this role.
Shocking scenes with his father. How do you work with Sergey Draganom?
Andrei Zaitsev: in addition to n��, I anyone else in this role is not seen. Only he could play such a father, what was Olga Bergholz, she was coming towards him through the city, confident that he would soon die. He is very kind, warm, humane person what to play is impossible – it is visible on the screen. After meeting with the Pope bringing back the will to live and the viewer, and the main character.
How did this bucolic beginning of the film: the location of the Nazis at Leningrad, lush Gretchen, Mozart music, playing war games?
Andrei Zaitsev: In the German diaries is episode: on battery, shelled the city, one of the lieutenants came the bride, and he decided to make her a gift: give to shoot in Leningrad. Taking these episodes, we don’t like cartoons: no do not “Aryans”, all hate, and cheerful young people just doing what they are charged, and do not think about the fact that there, in Leningrad, going on. The work is monotonous, it is boring – it can be seen in German newsreels. Nobody is attacking the planes did not bomb them, and every day you have to make a number of shots at an unknown city. They are currently in the bath and dugout set, and the letters were typed on a typewriter, not a war, and a rest home. But they shoot, the projectile flies – and we see what a nightmare this turns into a fun game voynushku.
How do you feel about the versions that besieged the hardships involved not all were privileged? This is the other side of the harsh truth about the war?
Andrei Zaitsev: People using his official position, was, is and will be, in the “Blockade book” has a description of such people. In his diary, the boy then died from hunger, writes how he and his family slowly die and roommates cooked meat, and he hears this agonizing smell. It was and is. But, according to blockade manifestations of self-sacrifice, of helping each other was much more – and therefore survived. The fate of the country hung in the balance – but she won. Young generations have little idea what war is in reality. And so I so it is important that as more people watched our movie, so the phrase of Olga Bergholz “nobody is forgotten and nothing is forgotten” became an anachronism.
Andrei Zaitsev is a graduate of the faculty of journalism of Moscow state University and the Higher courses of scriptwriters and Directors. Military theme involved for a long time, has many awards, including the Prize of the government of the Russian Federation for the film “Viktor Astafyev. Merry men”, the TV series “My Great war”. His feature films “Slackers” and “14+” triumphantly marched through the festivals in Russia, Germany, France, South Korea, Italy. He was twice a winner and twice a member of the jury of the festival “the Double DV@”.
