Golden Mine

Золотая мина (1977)

Timing: 2:19 (139 min)

8/10
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• Director Evgeny Tatarsky gave the script to his friend, writer and screenwriter Artur Makarov, asking him to rework it within a month. Makarov managed to finish it in ten days. The script was completely rewritten. It became entirely unlike what Pavel Grakhov had originally written, even though Grakhov's script had been instantly approved by the Lenfilm studio's artistic council. The detective story became more intriguing and dynamic. At Tatarsky's request, the screenwriter wrote the role of the criminal, Kosov, specifically for Oleg Dal. In gratitude, Makarov asked Tatarsky to cast Zhanna Prokhorenko, for whom he wrote the role of Kosov's sister.
• A significant number of the actors wore their own dresses and suits. It wasn't even about saving money. In Tatarsky's opinion, since the story takes place in the present day and the actors are playing contemporaries of their own age, they would perform better in their own familiar clothing.
• In one of the scenes involving a Volga car, Larisa Udovichenko, who did not have a driver's license, was replaced by a male double of a similar build, who was given a red scarf to create a visual resemblance. Director Evgeny Tatarsky instructed the cameraman: "The main thing is—don't show his hairy arms."
• Evgeny Tatarsky liked Larisa Udovichenko's performance in Sergei Gerasimov's melodrama "Daughters-Mothers" (1974), where she played Galya Vasilyeva. According to the director's assistant, Gerasimov had ordered her to "find the actress who played one of the daughters of Elena Alekseyevna and Vadim Antonovich" (played by Tamara Makarova and Innokenty Smoktunovsky, respectively) for a screen test, but he did not mention the actress's name. The assistant assumed he meant Udovichenko and called her. Udovichenko's screen test took place at the Lenfilm studio on a day when Tatarsky was out of town. Upon his return, he saw the results of the screen test and immediately cast her in the role of Lebedeva. Only much later did he admit that he had expected to see a different actress at the screen test.
• The scene of Podnieks' arrest (played by Igor Dmitriev) at the Finland Station was improvised and filmed on location among unsuspecting passengers. Dmitriev boarded the commuter train one stop before the terminus, and he was 'arrested' by actual police officers. Director Evgeny Tatarsky gave the officers photographs of the actor so they would know who to detain, and told the actor simply to improvise. When the police asked Tatarsky which platform the train with Dmitriev would arrive at, he replied that he had no idea.
• Director Evgeny Tatarsky wanted to make a film about the daily lives of the Soviet police in a reportage style, so he ordered the cinematographer to remove the tripod and shoot everything handheld.
• During filming, director Evgeny Tatarsky encouraged improvisation and even put the actors through peculiar tests—sometimes making unannounced changes to the script. For example, in the scene at the floating restaurant, while Lyubov Polishchuk's character is waiting for the movie hero played by Oleg Dal, she is approached not by Dal, but by an intoxicated restaurant patron (played by Oleg Khromenkov), who begins to flirt with her. The actress's reaction was instantaneous: "I'm waiting for a delegation."
• In the 1970s, the use of body doubles and stunt performers on set was not yet a common practice. Igor Dobryakov, in the role of Lokhov, performed the dangerous stunts himself, particularly those involving a motorcycle. In fact, the first take failed because the traffic police began chasing the motorcyclist after noticing a passenger without a helmet.
• Before "The Golden Mine," Lyubov Polishchuk, a performer at the Moscow Music Hall, appeared in a small role for Mark Zakharov in the 1976 mini-series "The Twelve Chairs" starring Andrei Mironov (who played Ostap Bender). Her appearance in Evgeny Tatarsky's film was due to a happy accident: the director noticed one of the actresses in Boris Durov's television drama "The Zatsepin Family" (1977), and the assistant director either misheard the name or misunderstood it, but called Polishchuk—who played in the same scene for Durov—for the screen tests.
• The final arrest of the character played by Oleg Dal was also filmed using real police officers, without rehearsals, and improvisation was encouraged. Dal got carried away and tried to jump over the bar counter when they came to arrest him. The scene was shot in a single take. As part of the improvisation, Dal threw a short curse word toward a girl.

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