Anatoly Solonitsyn is a wonderful and very famous actor of Soviet cinema. He starred in films that were included in the Golden Fund of Cinematography of the USSR. An incredibly talented, always creative artist, starred in the most stellar, eminent and cult directors of the time.
He worked with Alov and Naumov, Abdrashidov, Gubenko and Zarkhi, Mikhalkov and Larisa Shepitko, Gerasimov and Panfilov. Few actors can boast of this.
Wonderful great-grandfather
Anotoliy Solonitsyn was born in 1934 in the small town of Belgorodsk, in the Gorky region. The Solonitsin family is represented by several generations of the Russian intelligentsia. Great-grandfather - Zakhar Solonitsyn - was called the "Vetluzh chronicler", several books remained after him. His self-portrait, painted in oil on canvas, has also been preserved. He was not only a chronicler, but also a bogomaz, that is, an icon painter, and quite "noble".
For free thoughtsabout the need to reorganize the state, which he shared with his friend, who left for Paris, Zakhar Solonitsin was expelled from the monastery. The founder of Pochinka Zotovo, every day he went to church in Tanshaevo along the road he cut through the forest, which has been preserved and is called by the people “Zakharova's path.”
The next representatives of the dynasty of intellectuals
An unusual person was his son, the village doctor Fyodor Solonitsyn. Not every provincial physician is accepted into the New York Hypnotic Society. The doctor, who had a rare gift of treating people through hypnosis, died at the age of 45, saving fellow villagers from typhus. All representatives of a powerful family, like Anatoly Solonitsyn himself, were devotees: completely devoting themselves to their favorite work, they did not spare themselves at all. The father of the magnificent performer of the role of Andrei Rublev in the distant 50s worked as the editor of the Bogorodskaya Pravda newspaper, then his talent was noticed, and he became the executive secretary of the Gorkovskaya Pravda newspaper, and then the staff correspondent of Izvestia.
First steps in acting
Anatoly Solonitsyn at birth received the name Otto. In those years, children were often called foreign names: internationalism was popular. But the future famous artist was named specifically in honor of Otto Schmidt, the leader of the polar expedition. And then German names were associated with the Nazis, and the boy asked to be called Anatoly, although he always remained Otto in his passport.
Anatoly became interested in amateur art in the city of Frunze,where the father was transferred. Despite the fact that the boy had a technical school and the speci alty of a toolmaker behind him, in the new city Anatoly goes to the 9th grade and is actively involved in the theater circle. And it turned out so nicely that they began to invite him to give speeches in various institutions of the city. And the dream of becoming an actor grew stronger.
Sverdlovsk "Alma mater" and the beginning of professional activity
When you read about what the greatest artists did not enter the prestigious metropolitan theatrical universities with a sentence of "incompetence", you begin to involuntarily think about the competence of the selection committee. After all, Solonitsyn Anatoly Alekseevich, who was rejected by her three times, just a few years later, he himself gave mastery lessons to students. The third unsuccessful attempt to enter GITIS forced Solonitsyn to go to Sverdlovsk. In order not to lose another year, Anatoly Alekseevich successfully passes exams at the studio at the Sverdlovsk Drama Theater, which has just opened. After graduation, the actor remains at the Sverdlovsk Theater.
Here, in this city, he gets his first, but the main role in the short film by Gleb Panfilov. The picture "The Case of Kurt Clausewitz" was the film debut of the young director of the Sverdlovsk film studio. It so happened that the first director that the actor Anatoly Solonitsyn met was the wonderful Gleb Panfilov.
Towards a star role
And Andrei Tarkovsky became the main thing in the creative destiny of the actor. Anatoly Alekseevich for the sake of an interesting role, without hesitation, changed cities and theaters. In those years, the thick magazine Art of Cinema was published,in which scripts were printed monthly. Solonitsyn read "Andrey Rublev" and rushed to Moscow. He felt that he could and should play this role. His unusual and appropriate in this case appearance, and talent convinced Tarkovsky so much of the need to shoot it, and not the already approved Stanistlav Lyubshin, that the director went against all the artistic advice.
In order to dispel the last doubts about the correctness of the choice, Andrei Tarkovsky turned to experts in ancient Russian art with the question of which of the twenty actors, whose photographs he provided, most of all, in their opinion, corresponds to the image of Andrei Rublev. The answer was unanimous - Anatoly Solonitsyn. His filmography, numbering 46 excellent works by the end of his life, was crowned with this second, then unsurpassed by any other film role.
Working with A. Tarkovsky
The film was released in 1966 and brought worldwide fame to Solonitsyn. Andrei Tarkovsky was awarded the Finnish Jussi Film Award as the best foreign filmmaker. It has already been noted that the actor did not have bad, failed roles - he was very talented and obsessed with the profession. But on memorial plaques and on the gravestone, Solonitsyn is depicted in the image of Andrei Rublev. Working on this role changed the artist's views on many things, including religion. For the director, he became a kind of talisman - Anatoly Alekseevich later starred in all his films, except for "Nostalgia", in which, due to Solonitsin's fatal illness, he played the main roleOleg Yankovsky. Even in the "Mirror" the actor was busy in the role of Passer-by, specially invented for him. It is necessary to separately note the work in the films of his idol. He created memorable portrayals of Dr. Sartorius in Solaris (1972) and The Writer in Stalker (1979).
Favorite Writer
Solonitsyn lived a short life - he was only 47 years old. He was a very decent, devoted, honest man, an excellent partner, a smart girl with a wonderful sense of humor, a real, in Chekhov's interpretation of the word, a Russian intellectual. Dostoyevsky was his favorite writer. In order to play the role of the author in the failed film adaptation of The Idiot, the artist was ready to undergo plastic surgery.
When Tarkovsky asked him who he would portray later with the face of Fyodor Mikhailovich, Solonitsyn replied that later, after this role, he would have no one to play and no need to. And in 1980 he really played his favorite classic in the film "26 Days in the Life of Dostoevsky" directed by Alexander Zarkhi. The role earned him the Silver Bear at the Berlinale.
Theatrical stage
Anatoly Solonitsyn, whose biography has changed dramatically after the role of Andrei Rublev and meeting Andrei Tarkovsky, becomes, in essence, a film actor. His last theatrical role was Hamlet, staged on the stage of Lenkom by the same Andrei Tarkovsky. Solonitsin played this role in December 1976. He served in drama theaters in Moscow, Leningrad, Sverdlovsk, Minsk, Novosibirsk andTallinn. And on the stage he created several unforgettable images. In addition to the aforementioned Hamlet, the theatrical event was the role in the play based on the play by Leonid Andreev "The one who receives slaps", staged by Arseny Sagalchik. For her sake, A. Solonitsyn moved to Tallinn for a while.
Working with other directors
In the cinema, the best were his works by Gleb Panfilov in the film "There is no ford in the fire" and by Nikita Mikhalkov in the film "Among Strangers". He played wonderfully with Larisa Shepitko in Ascension and with Alexei German in Check on the Roads.
The roles he played in "Anyuta Road" and in Gerasimov's "To Love a Man" were wonderful. A separate niche is occupied by his work in the film by Vladimir Shamshurin "In the Azure Steppe", filmed in 1969. The point is not that he remarkably played the role of the Cossack Ignat Kramskoy, but that on the set of this picture he fell ill with pneumonia. Being obsessed with work, Anatoly Alekseevich continued to act without being cured, which subsequently led to tragic events - lung cancer.
Last significant role
Actor Anatoly Solonitsyn, whose biography in these years was full of favorite work and love, did not pay much attention to his he alth. They learned about the degree of neglect of the disease by accident. In 1981, he starred with V. Abdrashidov in the film "The train stopped." According to the plot, his hero, journalist Malinin, rides a horse. The actor, unable to stay in the saddle, severely bruised his chest during the fall. In the hospital, during the examination, they discover lung cancer, and in the Firstthe medical institute, where the actor was urgently delivered, found that metastases had already spread to the spine, and the process could not be stopped. Work in this film becomes the last significant film role. In the same 1981, A. Sodonitsyn received the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR.
Sickness and death
The illness was greatly complicated by the news that his idol was already shooting the film "Nostalgia" in Italy, and the coveted role was given to Oleg Yankovsky. Moreover, A. Tarkovsky did not find the strength or time to say goodbye to his dying "talisman", although he lived in close proximity. Anatoly Alekseevich ordered to remove the portrait of Tarkovsky from the wall. There is a proverb that a person who betrays a friend will betray his homeland without hesitation.
But, obviously, certain creative individuals are above such concepts as loy alty and betrayal. The actor's illness began to progress, but he died instantly, without experiencing terrible pain - he choked on the porridge that the nurse fed him. The actor was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery.
Private life
In the summer of 1982, the brilliant Anatoly Solonitsyn passed away. The personal life of the actor was no less eventful than creative. Anatoly Alekseevich was married three times. In the second marriage, the actor had a daughter, Larisa, who since 2014 has been working as the director of the Cinema Museum. Son Alexei, born in his third marriage, at first did not follow in his father's footsteps. But now he works in the film industry. So the creative dynasty continues. The fate of AnatolyAlekseevich is wonderfully described in the work of his younger brother, the writer Alexei Solonitsyn, which is called “The Tale of the Elder Brother.”
