In November 2010 Liudmila Gurchenko, a brilliant, universal performer, admired by the audience, marked her 75th birthday. However, as her friends aptly admitted, “Liusia will always remain 28 years old.” Gurchenko tried to look accordingly: she was slim, even fragile, and as always elegant and full of energy. Unlike some of her colleagues, she did not lose her head during the crisis, and continued to work in theater, record CDs, and improve the scripts she came up with long ago. She also made her debut as a director: she shot the film The Motley Twilight, where she performed the leading role, wrote the script, and composed the soundtrack.
The artistic career of Kharkiv-born Gurchenko started in 1956 with her debut in Yan Frid’s film Road of Truth. The same year Eldar Ryazanov, a young film director then, offered her a part in a musical comedy Carnival Night, which brought fame to the formerly poor young student. This was followed by years of oblivion and despair, until Gurchenko was offered the role of a plant director in Old Walls.
On the whole, the actress’s filmography includes nearly 100 cinema roles. The best known and admired by the audience are such films as 20 Days without War, Five Evenings, Mechanic Gavrilov’s Beloved Woman, Station for Two, Love and Pigeons, The Straw Hat.
Gurchenko’s character in her debut film Road of Truth says the following phrase: “I came here not to keep silence.” The statement was crucial for Gurchenko, who became a great Russian actress. Proof of this will be the applause, by which the audience traditionally bids adieu to its idols.
Roman BALAIAN, film director, Kyiv:
“I so much love and appreciate Liusia that I cannot understand what has happened. Last time we met was in November in Kyiv; we had supper, talked for some three hours, and laughed. What can I say? A truly great actress left us, and we all are widowers now.
“I remember when I started to shoot the film Flying in Dreams and in Reality, the script writer Vitia Merezhko recommended Gurchenko for one of the roles. Liusia read the script, came for a meeting with me, and started to play in a manner typical of her. It was sharp, grotesque, and interesting. But it was not the way I saw the role. And I have a theory. If you understand that the actor is more talented than you, you should convince him that the director is cleverer. If you see that the actor is cleverer, you need to convince him that you’re more talented. I made Gurchenko understand that a director is more knowledgeable about the film than the actor. I said, ‘Wonderful! Inconceivable! But if I was shooting in France I would have invited Anouk Aimee.’ ‘I see,’ Liusia replied, ‘I will stay in the focus and keep silence.’ During the shooting I could come up to her and say, for example, ‘Raise your hand, wipe your nose,’ and she performed everything in a most obedient manner. It is not important for great actors from where the hint comes, their own observations, or someone else’s, they don’t care.
“We did not see each other often. There might have been 10 meetings or so. But this never spoiled the very warm attitude to each other that we had. When I saw her, I would approach her from the back and kiss in the back of her head. Liusia would say without turning her head, ‘This must be Balaian.’”
Oleh FIALKO, film director, Kyiv:
“I will tell you frankly, it is hard to speak about Liudmila Gurchenko, especially on days of mourning. She was a star, in the most direct sense of this word, not spoiled with banalities. When I decided to shoot the film Imitator, I offered Gurchenko a very small role in the film. To my surprise, she agreed. Moreover, before going to Kyiv from Moscow she said with admiration, on one of the TV shows on the Central channel (it was the USSR), how she liked the script and the prospect to work in Ukraine, her homeland. We thoroughly prepared for her arrival. We were attentive, but the shooting process can never be foreseen, so the great actress often had to sit and wait for several hours until she was called to play. But I have never heard any scandals or whims from Gurchenko.
“She is unique. She belongs to the history of cinema. She is an entire epoch, a continent. The loss of such an actress is truly irremediable. I don’t know when anyone like her will be born. I don’t think it will happen soon.”
