42 years of the Love and Lies

On March 23, 1981, on the day of the beginning of the spring vacations for all Soviet schoolchildren, a film by Ilya Frez "Love and Lies (Could One Imagine?)" was released on the screens of the cinemas of the Soviet Union. In the United States, the film was shown under the title "Love and Lies", in some other countries, a more adequate, although not quite accurate, translation of the title was used - " Could One Imagine?"

The film "Love and Lies (Could One Imagine?)" was released in the rental not the largest, but not the smallest edition - 949 copies. But this did not prevent the film from becoming the leader of the Soviet film distribution in 1981, having gathered more than 26 million moviegoers.

The success of the film in cinemas was preceded by the following events. Once upon a time there was a woman named Galina Shcherbakova. Several years she worked as a teacher of Russian language and literature, then she worked as a journalist... But she was eager to become a writer. And not just wanted to, but also wrote. For almost 10 years, she has written several novels and short stories. But no one wanted to publish them. And then, when Galina Nikolaevna was already 45 years old, she decided to write a story about the love of teenagers. She was prompted to this idea by an incident that happened to her son, a tenth-grader, who climbed the drainpipe to the 6th floor to his beloved girl and fell. But, thank God, there were no serious consequences.

Naturally, since the story is dedicated to teenage love, then the names of the heroes should be like Shakespeare's heroes: Roman and Julia. That was the name of this story, which Galina Nikolaevna sent to the editorial office of the magazine "Yunost (Youth)". But, as in the previous decade, Galina Nikolaevna received neither an answer nor a greeting from the editorial office. Someone else, perhaps, calmed down on this and would return to work as an editor of the regional youth newspaper in Volgograd. But this is not about Galina Nikolaevna. She sent her story to the Gorky Film Studio for Children and Youth Films. And - oh, a miracle! - after a while received a phone call. And not from anyone, but from Tamara Makarova herself, a famous Soviet actress, but, most importantly, the wife of the great Soviet director Sergei Gerasimov. And not just a director, but a secretary of the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR. In short, two days later Galina Nikolaevna was invited by the famous director Ilya Frez.

And some time later, when it was already decided to shoot a film based on the story of Galina Shcherbakova, the editor-in-chief of the magazine "Yunost" Boris Polevoy also met with her. He explained to Galina Nikolaevna that only one circumstance hinders the publication of her story: the tragic ending. (Well, how could it be otherwise: after all, the heroes of the story were inspired by the plot of Shakespeare's immortal play.) But Galina Nikolaevna did not persist and immediately changed the ending of the story. In addition, by this time, at the request of the cinematic authorities, she had to change the name of the main character from Julia to Katya. The authorities were very much afraid of direct analogies with Shakespeare. Well, and, accordingly, the name of the future film on "Could One Imagine?". So that there are no allusions to Shakespeare. Indeed, in Soviet society, thanks to "leading and guiding power", there can be no tragedies. Moreover, in adolescents.

As a result, almost simultaneously, the story of Galina Shcherbakova appeared in the highest-circulation magazine of the Soviet Union, and a film based on this story was released on the screens of cinemas and became the leader of the film distribution. In short, the dream of Galina Nikolaevna to become a writer came true. After all, after this resounding success, she wrote many more literary works. And all this is largely due to the help of Tamara Makarova. As they say, talents need to be helped, mediocrity will break through themselves.

Despite the impressive success at the box office, the film by Ilya Frez did not achieve serious festival achievements. The film "Love and Lies (Could One Imagine?)" was not nominated for authoritative international film festivals, and at the national - XIV All-Union Film Festival in Vilnius - in the section "Films for Children and Youth" it took second place. The first place was given to the film of the Kiev film studio named after Dovzhenko "Black chicken, or Underground inhabitants". Although this picture was much less popular with viewers.

Perhaps such a "wary" attitude of the jury of the All-Union Film Festival can be explained by the fact that the bosses have already sensed the smell of future changes in Galina Shcherbakova's story. The very smell noted in his lecture by the famous Russian writer and literary critic Dmitry Bykov: "In a sense, this story preceded the explosion of perestroika, because always during the thaw in Russian literature the question is raised - I will not say about the "age of consent", but about the age when it is possible, the question of child and adolescent love. We now live, for example, in an era of total prohibition. Children are prohibited from watching films on the Internet, any political activity is prohibited, naturally, under the pretext of pornography, any serious conversation about child sexuality and, that is, we live in an atmosphere of total prohibition ... "Could One Imagine?" - this title was read in a double sense. On the one hand, of course, Could One Imagine such love? ... But on the other hand, Could One Imagine what will now happen, because you are all on the verge of a catastrophe of a scale that you cannot imagine. Here are some rather tricky, rather complex meanings hidden under the innocent shell of this completely childish story."

The modern cinema audience, and not only the Russian one, appreciated the film no less highly than the Soviet audience of the early 80s of the last century. 75% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave this film ratings from 8 to 10. And 30% of users gave Ilya Frez's movie "Love and Lies (Could One Imagine?)" the highest rating - "ten".

With that said, FilmGourmand rated Ilya Frez's film "Love and Lies (Could One Imagine?)" at 8.213, placing it 474th in the Golden Thousand.