I did not ask for mercy from fate. "The wind was whistling, circling in the steppe crow. I searched everywhere for my gypsy happiness.
“Difficult Happiness” is the twelfth work of Alexander Stolper, to which he approached the already famous and accomplished director with two Stalin prizes: “A Tale of a Real Man” (1948) and “Far from Moscow” (1950). It is difficult to say what guided the director when choosing material for his next film, but this material has a truly bottomless depth, because the script for the film was written by Yuri Markovich Nagibin. Russian prose writer, literary critic, connoisseur of cinema, painting and music, author of many monographs about artists, journalist, he before the war graduated from the script faculty of VGIK, starting literary activity while still a student.
According to his scripts, 47 films were shot, including many unforgettable films: “The Chairman” (1964), “Dersu Uzala” (1975), “Guardemarines” (1987), 1991, 1993 and many others. At the same time, the writer himself was rather skeptical about this type of activity, which in different years he wrote in his “Diary”: “I need to seriously update the organism poisoned by film hacking”; “The scripts slackened me.” Be that as it may, but only thanks to his work, we can now look at unlike films, most of which are able to stir the hearts stiffened in the current grayness of film.
The script is based on the writer’s story “Difficult Happiness”, written by Yuri Nagibin in 1956 based on the earlier story “Tube” (1953). Anyone who has watched the film will immediately understand why the word “pipe” is included in the title of the story, and in the story it plays a role that is not unimportant, being a kind of link not only between two different people, but also between two opposing political systems. The film itself seems to be divided into two parts that are not equal in time and emotional mood. The first refers to the difficult gypsy slave, for which sometimes you have to pay a very high price. In the second part came 1925, the situation in the village is aggravated due to the ongoing for several years of preservatory.
This is just a political background, which absolutely will not say anything to the viewer, if not to perceive everything that is happening through the prism of acting. And this is where a real miracle happens. Soviet films have always been distinguished by the “depth of immersion” in the temporal slice about which the film was shot. If you apply the talent of the writer and the art of the director to this, the output turns out to be a work that is impossible to watch without awe. For Mikhail Kozakov - this is the fourth role in the movie, but how he looks like an adult gypsy! Oleg Efremov for a burning red hair and freckles is almost impossible to recognize! And Leonov! This is his seventh role, but how touching and naive he is in explaining to the bride!
In the film, there is another character who was not shown, but whose voice added depth and texture to the most emotional and piercing scenes - People's Artist of the USSR Nikolai Alekseevich Slichenko. It is his participation that makes you unconditionally believe in what is happening on the screen: the eyes or body can lie, but never with such a voice. And let the youthful figure of Mikhail Kozakov not always harmonized with the voice of Slichenko, but all this was from the heart: How often in the dark I dreamed of you until morning. And the stars shone bottomless through the torn canopy of the tent. How often did I secretly make my way through dark, unknown villages? How long have I wandered around the world until I found you?