Right after finishing shooting of "Flights In Dreams and In Reality" Roman Balayan starts to shoot one of his best films, the screen version of Chekhov's story "The Kiss". Chekhov was 27 when he was writing this story, and many things in it seem to be sketches for his future stories and plays. You can guess features of Vershinin, Tuzenbach, Voynitsky in the main character of Lieutenant Ryabovich, in his dramatic view if things, in his doomed attempt to escape his loneliness, to break away from dreary and vulgar comonness, in tenderness and delicacy of his emotions.
The plot of "The Kiss" is very simple. Artillery brigade stays for the night in a small village. The officers are invited to evening tea by the local landlord - retired Major-General Rabbek.
During the tea-ceremony (other landlords with wives and daughters came to visit Rabbek too) Ryabovich, who gets lost in darkness of an old house rooms, is suddenly kissed by a strange woman. If it was not Ryabovich, but someone less romantic, more sensible, he would've considered it a nice adventure and then told about it to his friends, may be brightened it, added some cynic shade to the meeting in darkness. In a word, would've behaved as a true winner, but for Ryabovich this mysterious episode at von Rabbek's, though remaining only reminiscence, becomes an event revealing the scantiness of days, lack of caress, love, happiness.
Ryabovich was played by Oleg Yankovsky who managed to find in the miserable provincial officer a kernel of spiritual melancholy, open the essence of a mystery which makes Ryabovich higher, purer, and nobler then those who surround him… One of those "who surround him" is a young officer, almost a boy. Probably, it is his first rank, but he is proud that his elder friends accepted him, especially the experienced, bald and handsome Lieutenant Lobytko (Alexandr Abdulov).
Roman Balayan recollects:
"The Kiss" was shot right after "Flights In Dreams and In Reality". And I finished it in eight month - even less then it is needed to carry a baby…
After "Flights…" there were constant excited sighs: "What a director Balayan is!" And I love my film "Lone Wolf" much more - it is much higher in art. And I started to think of shooting something else… And shot "The Kiss", because I realized that with "Flights…" I was as if considered a popular singer with an apt hit. If I didn't shot "The Kiss", "Flights…" would remain in my way for quite a long time.
I invented the part for Oleg Menshikov in "The Kiss" by myself. Actually, any other actor could play it. But Oleg was my friend and I always shoot friends. It is important for me who sits with me at the table… Who is at my side. If we are friends with these actors, they must be in my film. That's why I invited Menshikov.
Of course, I could think of a larger part for him, but frankly speaking I was all busy with the main character as usual. And Oleg' part is tiny…"
Balayan is right - indeed, Menshikov's part in the film is tiny, just seconds, and he has almost nothing to do. Everything is as at the visual position: at the foreground - Yankovsky, then - Abdulov, and behind them young, with thin mustache and as if scared eyes - Menshikov. May be he has two or three close-ups. And he sings romance. And rides a horse.
From Oleg Menshikov's TV-interview: "I can't get on well with horses. In no way… And we seem to have a mutual reluctance to meet each other. They don't take me, I don't take them…"
In fact, nothing else can be said about Menshikov's work in "The Kiss". The tribute to the friendship was given in full both by the actor and the director. The young officer didn't become a winning continuation of Oleg Menshikov's first roles in cinema.
(from the book by Elga Lyndina "Oleg Menshikov", Moscow - Panorama, 1999)
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