Director's swing The fate of George Jungvald-Khilkevich is very interesting. What was to happen to the director who made the mega-popular Three Musketeers? Obviously, he was waiting for a powerful and well-deserved breakthrough in his career.
And if it was far from the Order of Lenin or even the Red Banner of Labor (in 1980 Khilkevich was only forty-five, which means that it was still several years before the anniversary), then the transfer to one of the capital's studios - at least to Kiev - was guaranteed.
Translation and the subsequent green street: a director who knows how to work for the mass audience, to whom you give albeit not too loose - within the framework of official morality, but still entertainment, should be valued in the industry for its weight in gold.
However, nothing like this happened to Khilkevich: no rapid movement, no fairy tale (Georgi Emilevich, director of Mosfilm on the wire), no career breakthrough. The director remains in the same place where he was: in the provincial Odessa that sheltered him.
Moreover, if we talk about working conditions, they noticeably deteriorate - this can be judged by indirect signs - and deteriorate so much that it is time to suspect the management of the film studio in a conspiracy to get rid of a suddenly too high-flying creator.
Traces of this story can be found in the next film after "The Musketeers" by Khilkevich - a rather strange, and by today's and then standards, the picture "Where he goes!" The director, as far as one can understand his plan, acted in a traditional way for himself, making a musical comedy.
The emphasis is on the word “musical”: to write songs were attracted by such monsters as Leonid Derbenev and Maxim Dunaevsky. In addition to vocal numbers, the film contained choreographic ones, representing, rather, a revue connected into a single whole by an unwise plot.
And indeed, it is based on the story of the trip of an amateur pop collective from the Ukrainian village to Moscow for an all-Union competition, seasoned with comic adventures associated with the extraction of a super-tractor, could hardly attract the public who has long outgrown all these kolkhoz-sovkhoz pies.
This was a necessary convention, dictated by both political (a tick in the plan of the studio on the tapes of a modern village) and artistic considerations: in the end, in order to listen to Mikhail Boyarsky and admire Galina Belyaeva, you can suffer wrangling over the Belarus tractor, abruptly modernized at the Tbilisi plant.
However, the management had different views on this film. The leadership, which decided to finally solve the Jungwald question, did everything to prevent the picture from coming out. It began with the fact that the light musical unassuming comedy was filmed in winter - the gray Moscow winter with its eternally cold sky.
Russia, and then the USSR, is mainly a northern country, where the gloom of the exteriors and the duration of the heating season should be compensated by the brightness of the picture and botanical luxury. This applies to all films in general, and even comedy - even more so.
Accordingly, instead of young maidens dressed in weightless sundresses, members of an experimental field brigade, almost aunts wrapped in scarves and fur coats are in front of us. Potential sexuality is reduced almost to zero, and even white dresses Belyaeva is unable to correct the situation.
The second thing is that the bosses are really squeezing on the tape. It is not known by what standard the production operator was forced to spend precious meters, but, judging by the number of entered into the final version of the frank marriage (favorite joint: the actors now and then fall out of the cut, losing a whole head, then half), takes simply was not, removed from flight, what happened – it turned out.
Third, locations. The budget of the production was so modest that the group had no opportunity to regret: almost half of the scenes are taken on nature - on winter nature, when, in order to somehow save unfortunate artists, episodes with a trolley bus are invented on the go - the cabin is still a little warmer.
According to the law of meanness, the final shot was shot in the spring: the same miracle tractor, in ringing loneliness, crawls along a steep slope. In the distance, huge, solid, enviably curculous Ukrainian huts. And not a single character: they have already tormented themselves.
In a good way, after weighing all the circumstances, Khilkevich had to send his favorite guide, barely knowing in what conditions he would suffer the picture. Apparently, the count was on this: the director will be outraged, leave the project, and then you can safely prepare papers for his dismissal.
But Hilkevich did not succumb to provocation and, despite everything, the film brought to the end. Of course, “Where is he going!” turned out unsuccessful, otherwise it would be strange to expect. Surprisingly different: even in such a position, when the picture does not expect anything good, Khilkevich managed to make several exciting, truly lyrical scenes that show what the film could be, if it was the same attitude that was at Gorky’s studio to “Carnival” Lioznova.