The power of beauty Sometimes the story of making a film is more entertaining than the picture itself. In any case, such a story allows you to understand what and at what point “went wrong” on the set. At the time of filming the film "Beauty Salon" Alexander Vasilyevich Pankratov-Black was just an artist and just a director. (The honored artist of Russia will be given to him only in 1997.) However, he had 15 acting roles after graduating from the acting faculty of the Gorky Theatre School (1969), and directorial works, after graduating from the directorial faculty of VGIK (1976), two: “Adult Son” (1979) and “The Adventures of Count Nevzorov” (1982). These "adventures" played a cruel joke with him. As the artist recalls in his book Destiny-Villain" (2018) "After Pavlenok (Boris Vladimirovich Pavlenok - Deputy Chairman of the State Committee of the USSR for Cinematography 1970-1985) at the Plenum of the Union of Cinematographers said that in the film "The Adventures of Count Nevzorov" I looked from the back doorway at the October Revolution, I was not allowed to shoot my films for another three years.
Pankratov-Black, to support the family, had to be interrupted by “third-party earnings”: wash the car in taxi parks and trolleybuses in tram depots. I was once summoned to himself by Nikolai Sizov, CEO of Mosfilm: - So, Pankratov, how long will you be without work? Here's the script, read it. I'll do it if you agree. I take the script, I read "Beauty Salon," about the women's barbershop. The subject for me is completely unfamiliar, alien: I have never looked into women's hairdressers. For me, it was an exclusively female story about how one of the heroines beats her husband away from her friend. The script itself is weak. The weakness of the script was visible to everyone, so Pankratov-Black went for a kind of blackmail: ' - Okay, I will take this script, but with one condition: I will shoot those whom I decide. I gathered my fellow actors and said, Guys, help me. Let's go play scoundrels!
The studies were original. Vladimir Koenigson in the role of the oldest master of the beauty salon Petr Maksimovich Lagunov is simply incomparable, although he half-jokingly and half-seriously stated to the director before the shooting: "My boy, at my age to play sketches - bad." The etude of Georgy Burkov (veterinarian, husband of Ophelia - Ivan Andreevich) carries a completely different semantic load. Once he said to Pankratov: "San, so this is interesting!" Based on his line, he gave the on-screen character a contradictory character, ready for some compromises, but not bendable in his main decision. Tatiana Vasilyeva as Ophelia Sergeevna Zhuravleva, performing the work of the leading master of the beauty salon, both in behavior and appearance, still remains a woman of bohemian. She should sit in her chair and talk about the high fashion of Rome and Paris, not snap scissors. But Tatiana Ivanova in the image of Maria Andreevna is an exact correspondence to the character prescribed in the script.
As much as Ivan and Ophelia, who are married, are different in character and temperament, so much is Maria spiritually close to the “cat doctor”, “Aibolit”, the veterinarian Ivan Andreevich. Quite to the place was the role of a young trainee Katya, played by the only daughter of George Ivanovich Burkov - Maria. She's exactly 20 years old in the movie. A brilliant role in Maria Vinogradova. A brilliant actress of episodic roles! Whoever she plays, the character is remembered immediately and for a long time. The director, even before the start of filming, perfectly understood that the masterpiece will not work, but still took the picture. Therefore, today, 37 years after filming, we have a unique opportunity to plunge into the last Soviet five years. Enjoy acting. Nostalgic about half-empty roads. Admire hairstyles with loud foreign names. And all this - to beautiful voiceover music written by Yuri Antonov, who was at the peak of his fame in those years.
It is impossible to return to youth, but to look back and see how friendly we, friends, lived, afraid of suddenly offending each other. And realize that there is a hand outstretched to you in grief. After that you are ready for centuries to go to the sea by Columbus...'