Actor of rank of Gaben

After the release of the film by Roman Balayan "Flying Asleep and Awake", the film critics affirmed an idea that Yankovsky has embodied a man painfully worrying "middle age crisis man", and that his hero "feels emptiness" in soul and grey senselessness around. Thus, in the early eighties Oleg Yankovsky became a symbol of the "lost forty-year" generation . In his hero, the film critics saw rather the reflexing intellectual, than the person of an act.

Meanwhile, when I think on Oleg Yankovsky's characters in cinema, in my mind there are, above all, Scenes-Deeds and sometimes with an element of desperate:

When he shouts "Lay down! Now I will blow up you! " and vehemently rotate the camera - at once the enemy staff officers with fear hide under a table. ("There were two comrades in the army", 1966).

When having shaken on a tree branch, he jumps in the cold autumn river. As though on a fun. (Flying Asleep and Awake, 1982)

When, he as Baron Munchhausen climbs on a rope ladder to the cannon "be shot" on the Moon.

Although this fly on the cannonball in accordance with Court decision, although Hanover residents, in fact, betray him, Baron Munchhausen goes up with a light heart, that means, I think, some courage.

"I know what your trouble is, - says he. -
You are too serious.
A clever face is not as yet
an indication of cleverness.
All silly things on Earth
Are done with a clever
Look on one's face.
Smile, gentlemen!
Smile!"

He obstinately climbs up against the dark blue sky, sharp-nosed jack boots flash higher and higher.

Oleg Yankovsky in "The Hound of the Baskervilles"

In 1981 director Igor Maslennikov has offered him the part of artful villain Stapleton. By this time Yankovsky was already sky-high popular. "That Munchhausen" was released two years earlier, and "the person who never says lies" performed by Yankovsky instantly has been enlisted by public in Russian national heroes par with Sherlock Holmes.

How to embody on the screen the villain, who jumps in search of butterflies on marsh tussock like a grasshopper? No using caricature way, but with easy English irony? Without magic it was impossible to manage. The sheer choice for Oleg Yankovsky designated in this "antihero" a line of the wizard, true, unlike "An Ordinary Miracle", with the minus sign. That in fact put Stapleton/Yankovsky on the same level with Holmes.

His malefactor Stapleton is very embodiment of boyish adventurism. Stapleton feels ardour and games when talks with doctor Watson about how making coffee and a somewhat eccentric neighbours, he games when hides the tied wife, he games when pours brandy to Sir Henry before release him on eating up by Hound, seemingly, that he games even then when he drives back from the police... However, this game is not at all frivolity.

His Stapleton games mischievously with pleasure ... with such self-confidence and with such reliability as if Mr. Jack Stapleton has apprehended Stanislavsky's Method from far Russia, - however, it is no wonder, and he is a scientist, the enthusiast and is lively interested in the newest foreign theories.

... Yankovsky has amazing ability to create tension in a shot, as though from anything, almost staying idle. His sight with ironic screw up eyes when he looks at the opponent is extraordinary powerful. Let's remember, how in "The Hound of the Baskervilles" Stapleton smokes the cigar, having met Sherlock Holmes on moors. Here both Stapleton and Holmes have acted out a duel of sights, and a duel of intuitions, - not saying, however, nothing unnecessary.

Oleg Yankovsky in others movies

In his film list is more than 80 characters. Yankovsky was the cheerful baron-rebel Munchhausen, and the gloomy Decembrist-rebel Ryleyev, the tsar without a kingdom - Emperor Nikolay II and almighty "Gray Cardinal" Count Palen, dexterous and unprincipled lawyer Komarovsky in "Doctor Zhivago" and man-of-suffered-conscience silent writer Jonathan Swift, criminal-adventurer Stapleton and Anna Karenina's thrown husband. However, in spite of any Yankovsky's historical suit, the spectator always saw in his hero of our contemporary. "I, Oleg Yankovsky, in forced circumstances", - so sounded his acting formula.

In his "antiheroes", screen bastards and rascals, you always take notice of a "dandified spark" - it's charming. From the petty Soviet clerk who is costing not more than sheet of paper ("We, the Undersigned") - to the same Komarovsky. Even his dragon-dictator in Schwarz's fairy tale (Mark Zaharov's film adaptation, 1987) was able a little to fascinate you with the "too human" irony and sarcasm. But it was not "charm of harm". It was Oleg Yankovsky's charm. With such "artful screw up his eyes", he offered the audience a look at the hero from outside. (By the way, the role of Voland in TV-mini "The Master and Margarita" he has refused.)

Among his seven dozens characters I do not remember any "shoddy work", although there were cameos and roles of tertiary importance - on director's view sometimes, but not Yankovsky's one. Even ungrateful "nomenclature" roles, which, fortunately, he has a little bit in Soviet times, - like the secretary of Communist Party committee (a film "Award") looked convincingly and life-recognised.

The cinema has grown fond of his at once. Thirty leading characters are. Yankovsky has very quickly matured in a cinema, remained, paradoxically, extraordinary young in spirit and sports. Directors saw in his, first of all THE Personality, Character, - ironic, struggling, sometimes tossed and turned. Andrey Tarkovsky, Roman Balayan, Vladimir Motyl, Mikhail Shveytser, Igor Maslennikov and many other directors of the first magnitude could say: "Oleg Yankovsky IS my actor". However, first of all he was the actor of Mark Zaharov's theatrical cinema. Each his film character in Mark Zaharova's world: Wizard in "An Ordinary Miracle", Münchhausen, Jonathan Swift, and Dragon are philosophical ones ...

Red Army man Nekrasov - the studied less student, the photographer was one of the first roles of the actor. In fact, in nature and on belief, his Nekrasov is the civil person in Civil War, the man with the camera ("There were two comrades in the army", 1966). Thus, the role of cameraman Nekrasov who has soared with a movie camera on an airplane, also "has married" Oleg Yankovsky with a cinema for all life and for ever.

© alek-morse.livejournal.com