Alexey German: “It was a shame with him ...”

In his short life there were no special events. It will fit in a few lines. Born in 1934 in Leningrad. He graduated from the Higher Scenario Courses at the State Film Institute of the USSR and the courses at the film studio "Lenfilm". Until the end of his life he was the director of Lenfilm, the author of the scripts. Full-length feature films shot only seven. He is married twice, the first wife is a theater critic and author of books by Abe Norkuta, the second is a famous scriptwriter Natalia Ryazantseva. He died early in 1986. Like and all? ..

But, as one of Ilya Averbakh’s friends said, “he himself was a fascinating event in the life of everyone who knew him.”
There are people who are more than the sum of their creativity. People-signs, people-batteries - a certain energy, era, culture. That was Ilya Averbakh. A friend of his youth, the physicist Mikhail Petrov, called his article “The Phenomenon of Averbach”. The fact is that his life was filled with daily work - the work of creating his own life. Not by self-promotion or boasting, but by self-realization in its most precise sense: when a person generously gives his spiritual wealth to the world.

Young Ilya Averbakh grows in a certain sense along with post-war and post-Stalin Leningrad. The city gradually comes to life. Opens Leningrad Metro, television studio. Put a monument to Pushkin in the Square of Arts. On Nevsky they catch dudes. There are films Kheyfits, Hutsieva, Zarkhi. There are weeks of French and Italian cinema, exhibitions of avant-gardists. "Rehabilitate" banned writers. The first literary associations (litho) are created. Leningrad 50 – 60's - this is “an amazing constellation of people who in one way or another entered later into Russian literature”. Brodsky, Bitov, Rhine, Kushner, Gorbovsky, Gordin, Gorodnitsky ... Many of them are grouped around the brilliant Anna Akhmatova. Young St. Petersburg group are fighting in poets' tournaments at the Palace of Culture. There are fashionable clubs and cafes - a gathering place for bohemian youth.
But at the same time there are events in Poland, Hungary, executions in Novocherkassk. For his outstanding achievements in literature, Boris Pasternak is expelled from the Writers Union. They chase Marlene Hutsiev, Ernst Neizvestny and others. Under the unique Khrushchev comments quickly turn avant-garde painting. In 1960, Alexander Ginzburg (Galich) was arrested and exiled, in 64 the trial of Joseph Brodsky is underway ...
Such is the time. I love him very much and I am sure that his people, ideas, fruits are inexhaustible interesting. But I would like to live in it? I do not even know…

***

In 1958, Ilya Averbach graduated from medical school. He didn’t want to go there, but it was difficult to enter humanitarian universities with his last name, but in Medina there were acquaintances. Being talented, he studied well, but “towards the end of his studies he began to rebel more and more often ... He could break the chain at one moment, but our generation was accustomed to respect and pity the parents,” wrote Abe to Norkuta.
In an interview, Ilya Aleksandrovich was once asked: "What remains to be the most vivid impression of your childhood years?" He replied: "Comfort and peace in the parental house — the stove is burning down, the old sofa that Turgenev has not yet read." Leitmotif of life.
Alexander Leonovich Averbakh and his wife Ksenia Vladimirovna were both educated, witty, charming, musically and artistically gifted. A graduate of Smolny, a famous beauty Ksenia Kurakina was a theater actress, a performer of romances, a teacher of stage speech. She survived both her husband and son ...
The family was hospitable. The St. Petersburg intelligentsia was constantly in the house - artist Boris Kreutzer, literary critic Ilya Gruzdev, writer Lydia Ginzburg and many others. In those days, it was believed that all good people should stick together. You could hear “hello to you from such and such,” even if you were not familiar. This meant that they recognized you as their own.
Growing up in a family where “from morning till evening they talked about beauty”, Ilya, of course, wrote poetry and prose, was interested in journalism, literary criticism. Later, he and his first wife tried to write scripts for the Leningrad television.
Ilya Averbakh was courageously handsome, elegant and, as everyone noticed, very much like the French actor Belmondo. From father inherited secular manners, impeccable taste, authority and some arrogance. A few theatrical gentlemen and genuine decency and generosity singled out Ilya from the general circle of literary and bohemian youth, where "freedom that had fallen down from nowhere turned into freedom of morals, but also freedom from everyday standards." Very soon, near the young Averbach grew his circle.
Many in his Spartan ten-meter room were visited, but the regular guests were Yevgeny Rein, Dmitry Bobyshev, Joseph Brodsky, Viktor Golyavkin, Anatoly Gladilin, Mikhail Eremin, David Schraer, Sergey Wolf. All of them were part of the literary association at the Palace of Culture Promoperation (later Lensoveta). And they really needed if not readers, then at least listeners.
Remembers Abe Norkuta: “Reading poems was an act of courageous religious rites, or rather, male rituals. We, the women — the wives of Eru Korobov (Naiman), Galya Norinskaya (Raine), and me — were allowed into the room, but pushed into a corner. The boys would be very surprised if we said something more than: “Exactly!” Or “I think so too!” - and would eagerly wait for the end of the rant. Only Zhenya Rhine, a handsome man, a connoisseur of poetry, pretty women, a rich table and tweed jackets, treated us indulgently.
A big fan of the female, Ilya denied women intellectual equality. He was annoyed by heightened emotionality, endless talk about love and troubles, exaggerated concern for a man. Later, these traits acquired the name “curiosity” from Ilya. A sample of “chickiness” can be considered the scene of the heroine’s gathering before leaving for Bedhudov in “Faryatyev’s Fantasies”. Neither the director nor the operator, who love and respect Neelova, did not spare her heroine. ”
Elijah himself stopped writing verses over time, but the listener and connoisseur was excellent. “It was heard every now and then:“ Averbach said ... Averbakh appreciated ... Averbach did not like it ... ”He was both attracted and frightened. He was treated not only with respect, but also with a servility ... ”recalls M. Petrov. He was "senior" even in relation to those who were older than him. This role was sometimes annoying, sometimes annoying, but more often pleasurable.
They then lived in literature. Ilya could read Pasternak, Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva for hours, loved Bulgakov and Zoshchenko, savored Proust and Borges, like delicious food and expensive cigars, to which he was not indifferent. With all this, he loved courageous and gambling - from football to bridge, and there he also had his own company, which was disrespectfully called “code”.
At the beginning of 60's, Averbach matured the decision to go to Moscow - to study at the Higher scenario courses. In the parent camp rose storm. But this time, Ilya insisted and just left.
Natalia Ryazantseva, a Muscovite who also studied in the workshop of E. Gabrilovich, first heard about Averbakh from a mutual friend: “Do you really not know - now only one is a young director, this is Ilya Averbakh!” She asked about his work. “He hasn’t put anything yet, but it doesn’t matter. He entered the script courses. ”

***

At the end of 60, Ilya Alexandrovich returned to Leningrad and continued his studies at the Higher Courses of Scriptwriters and Directors, in the workshop of Grigory Kozintsev. In 1967, the film “Kuzyaev Valentin’s Personal Life” was released, based on the Ryazantsev stories. Ilya Averbakh and Igor Maslennikov shot it. Kozintsev responded about the first work of Averbach: “Not bad”.
Alexey Hermann's first impressions about Ilya were - besides the unchanged Belmondo - these are: dude, snob, lucky, everyone's favorite. “Kozintsev's favorite student. He looked down on me (if he looked at all). Bad way to like it. And yet - where to get away from it - was irresistibly attractive. ”
But Herman said the main thing: “It was a shame with him. It was a shame. It was a shame not only to become lame or groveling (it was enough to imagine what a grimace he would make - horror!). It was a shame to talk nonsense and vulgarity. I was ashamed to call white black or crush the defenseless. That is, of course, they still did and said, we will not mythologize the situation. But it was painfully uncomfortable at the time of Ilya. ”
For all that, Averbach was a diplomat. He did not strike the table with his fist, did not go ahead, did not commit acts, but was able to encourage others to do so. He was neither a dissident, nor a tragic loner who raised his voice against lawlessness. He was even loved by the studio bosses. But “he was struck by the impeccability and accuracy of his moral position in the most intricate everyday situations. This feature was undoubtedly directly related to his work. ”
With the actors, Averbach worked tough, demanding, but this was softened by his famous courtesy and artistry. He himself showed wonderful stage scenes.

The scriptwriter V. Valutsky wrote: “Averbach worked - always. And most of all, probably when he was in his offensively long downtime. I do not dare to tell you what a painful invisible work went on in him. But I know how she responded to other people associated with his friendship and general belonging to the movie. We all were constantly in a tense creative field of his plans, ideas, doubts, insights, delusions. ”
When the film was launched into production, Averbakh felt euphoria, which was quickly replaced by a deep depression: it seemed that the plan was collapsing, that the estimate was irreversibly exceeded ... They were tormented by endless corrections that were made by different authorities during the shooting. Depression was replaced by feverish work from morning till night, “station” life. Then - doubts and fears for the fate of the newborn film. And so - continuously.
Ilya Averbakh during the time of deaf stagnation and the strongest censor press managed to form not only immaculate moral positions, but also her own style - restrained, refined, elegant. Dmitry Bykov wrote 10 years ago in his polemical manner that good taste and was always the tragedy of this director. “It is thanks to him that Averbakh forever remained in the shadows, in St. Petersburg semi-provincial status, among directors too literary - although few people missed Monologue and almost everyone admired“ Aliens' letters ”... His good taste, notorious“ intelligence ”too demonstrative, sometimes challenging ... Complete rejection of declarations. The main intonation, the undisputed dominant of the Avverbach films, making them a true sign of the epoch, is an acute melancholy ... There is always a personality hero, cementing the environment and not giving it a final whiff. It is always an excuse for time. But it is the futility of all efforts and creates a feeling of complete hopelessness ... "- said Bykov.
Natalya Ryazantseva after the death of her husband found his note from a notebook related to the beginning of 1980's. She was very surprised, because the tone was not at all typical of Ilya Alexandrovich: “Everybody in forty years gets what he owes what he deserves. I deserved loneliness pitch and full. Having slipped a little ahead of my opportunities, pretending, as well as pretending all my life, talented and smarter than it actually is, having taken someone else’s place in art, I was punished for justice with black loneliness and the simultaneous loss of the two closest people. Everything from scratch, in the emptiness, all alone. Even sincere conversation - only to myself ... "

In the fall of 1985, the director was persistently thinking about the production of “The White Guard”: “I go back to that time all the time ... In this novel, the feeling of incompleteness is quite strong. I still know a lot about this, which Bulgakov doesn’t have ... The theme of honor in general for a 19th century Russian man entering the 20th century ... He’s from there, a pupil of this whole culture, is an intelligent person who lives here and understands doom, understands everything that will happen . Acting contrary to common sense, because it is stronger than him ... "
By 1986, the more “fashionable” director was Alexey German with his “Ivan Lapshin”. But Ilya Averbakh was the most authoritative person of Lenfilm. His “Voice” (the last work of the director in the game cinema) caused an ambiguous attitude. However, "Averbakh ... became in this country the last director, whose hero in the cinema was an intellectual" (I. Pavlova, film expert).
Alexey German was convinced that for Ilya Aleksandrovich it was not so much fatigue, work, open or deaf opposition were deadly, but humiliation. Perhaps he was right. What could be more toxic for the elite, aristocratic St. Petersburg sixties than the destruction of ideals? “With his death ... the whole epoch in which cinema was not so much entertainment as the art of spiritual self-expression and human self-preservation ended ... The epoch, of course, did not change as a result of the departure of this artist. But his departure was a kind of mystical reaction to the beginning of a timelessness, in which Averbach definitely had no place. ”
Script writer V. Valutsky wrote: “Most of all, he could not tolerate the laziness of the spirit, the“ souring of the personality, ”as he said, thoughtlessness, idleness and the triumph of idleness over necessity. He was not small, but severe. A long-distance call could be heard at night, but for the optional chatter the question inevitably followed: “What achievements?” There were no achievements at all. The director was angry. And although objectively, perhaps, to conscience and there were no reasons - it still became a matter of conscience.
Probably, and this is the direction, in any case, that side of it, which is turned to the screenwriter: to infect, enthrall, scold, to be a permanent catalyst. And now - when you sit with sleepless night hours behind an unwritten sheet - how badly sometimes there is a lack of a night call, the Avverbach bass in the handset and this playful, but always wary-demanding: “What are the achievements?” ”.

Olga KSENZYUK,
"Migdal Times"