55 years of the "Three Poplars" at Plyuschikha Street
Many sources indicate that the premiere of Tatyana Lioznova's film "Three Poplars at Plyuschikha Street" took place in the USSR on April 29, 1968. But a month and a half before this date, on March 15, the film was presented to guests and participants of the international film festival in Mar del Plata, Argentina.
At the festival in Mar del Plata, Lioznova's film claimed the main prize. But by the decision of the jury, the main prize of the festival went to the American film "Bonnie and Clyde" directed by Arthur Penn ("The Miracle Worker"). The company of relative losers to the film by Tatyana Lioznova was, in particular, the Czechoslovak film "Marketa Lazarová" by Frantisek Vlácil, the Japanese "Jôi-uchi: Hairyô tsuma shimatsu (Samurai Rebellion)" by Masaki Kobayashi, American "The Incident" by Larry Pierce and others. All the above listed pictures received some kind of award at the festival. Including the film "Three Poplars on Plyushchikha", which received the OCIC Award.
Few, probably, know that the main character of the picture, brilliantly played by the great Tatyana Doronina, who was awarded the All-Union Film Festival in Minsk in 1971 for this role, as well as the husband of the main character, had real prototypes - the family of Anna Fedorovna and Nikolai Vasilyevich Gorbunovs. The writer Alexander Borschagovsky, the author of the story "Three poplars on Shabolovka", literally wrote off his heroes from this family. Whether the taxi driver, whose role was played by the famous Oleg Efremov, had a real prototype, history (more precisely, Anna Fedorovna) keeps in silence. Read more about the Gorbunovs' family here.
Outside the USSR, the film by Tatyana Lioznova "Three Poplars on Plyushchikha" remained practically unknown to the general public. The basis for such a conclusion can be the complete absence of reviews for the film on the site rottentomatoes.com and literally a few reviews on IMDB. The more valuable is the enthusiastic review of the film by the American blogger Patrick Nash, who called Lioznova's picture "Russian "Casablanca"".
It is curious that one of the most authoritative Russian film critics, Sergei Kudryavtsev, also compared "Three Poplars on Plyushchikha" with a masterpiece of world cinema, but with another one:
"Tatyana Lioznova's honest and convincing urban melodrama seems to be not only a story of failed love that still touches the soul, as if our version of "Un homme et une femme (A Man and a Woman)"..., but also a kind of swan song of farewell to the "summer of the 60s."
In the year of its release in the Soviet Union, Tatyana Lioznova's picture gathered in cinemas more than 26 million moviegoers, or 11% of the country's population. A film with such indicators in most countries would become the leader of the box office. However, then, in 1968, "Three Poplars on Plyushchikha" was not even included in the top ten "leaders". However, today, more than half a century after the release of the picture on the screens, the preferences of moviegoers have changed. Of the top ten of "leaders" mentioned, the rather high ratings of audience sympathy, which allowed them to enter the Golden Thousand, retained two films: "Щит и меч (The Shield and the Sword)" and "Ещё раз про любовь (Once Again for Love)" - again with the incomparable Tatyana Doronina in the main role. The remaining 8 films from the list of 10 leaders of the Soviet film distribution in 1968 were seriously behind the ratings of the film by Tatiana Lioznova.
75% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users (three out of four) rated the film from 8 to 10. And 33% of users, every third (!), rated the film with the highest score - 10. With that said, the rating of Tatyana Lioznova's film "Three Poplars on Plyushchikha "according to FilmGourmand version was 8.128, which allowed it to take 562nd Rank in the Golden Thousand.
And - yes - the most correct title of the film is given in the title of this article, where the words "three poplars" are enclosed in quotation marks. Since we are not talking about trees, but about the name of the cafe.
