When the French film "The Sorceress" appeared in the USSR with Marina Vladi in the title role, the audience was simply shocked. For many thousands of Soviet girls, the heroine of the film instantly became a model for imitation. And the male half of the Soviet Union dreamed and dreamed that their beloved outwardly resembled this mysterious French actress. However, the most unrealistic ambitions were in the head of the little-known actor of the Taganka Theater Vladimir Vysotsky. Seeing Marina Vlady on the screen, he said to himself: "She will be mine."
"At last I met you ..."
Vladimir Vysotsky and Marina Vladi - the love story is not simple in its essence. If Vysotsky wanted something, he received it. They met in 1967 during the Moscow International Film Festival. By that time, there had been some changes in the life of each of them. Marina Vladi (daughter of the Russian emigrant Vladimir Polyakov) has already been married twice, played in a dozen films and became a worldwide celebrity, winner of the Cannes Festival. Vysotsky still did not even have an all-Union popularity, but his songs have long since become fashionable in Moscow. He also was married twice, had children.
On that memorable day, the guest of the festival Marina Vladi was invited to the Taganka Theater. Showed "Pugacheva" on Yesenin's poem, the role of Klopushi played Vysotsky. The performance made a great impression on Marina Vlady.
After the presentation they were at the same table in the restaurant. Vysotsky unceremoniously examined the French diva, then went up to her and said quietly: "At last I met you. I would like to leave here and sing only for you. "
And now he is sitting at her feet and singing his best songs to the guitar. Then, as in delirium, she admits that she loves her for a long time. She responds with a sad smile: "Volodya, you are an extraordinary person, but I only have a few days to travel and I have three children." He does not give up: "I also have a family and children, but all this should not prevent us from becoming a husband and wife."
Days of love.
When Marina again came to Moscow, Vysotsky was in Siberia on the set of the film "The Master of the Taiga". In the meantime, Vladi got a role in S. Yutkevich's film "The plot for a short story" and thanks to this was delayed in the Union.
In one of the autumn evenings, at a party at the Volodya friends, Marina asked to leave them alone. The guests parted, the owner went to his neighbors, and Marina and Volodya talked about their love all night.
January 13, 1970 in a rented at the Moscow apartment took place the wedding of Vladimir Vysotsky and Marina Vlady - the love story entered the stage of the peak. The next day the newlyweds set off for the honeymoon on the ship to Georgia. These were their best days. The smell of the sea and the sweet seclusion, the cordiality of Georgian friends, juicy kebabs and homemade wine ...
Then parting: he - to Moscow she - to Paris. Both have gray routine, difficulties with children. He is not given a visa to go to France. There are correspondence and phone calls.
One day Volodya told Marina that Andrei Tarkovsky wanted to take it off in his Mirror. A flash of joy - they will be together for a while! But time passed, and it turned out that Marina had not passed the test - her candidacy was rejected. Vysotsky was enraged. His anger he began to jam in a drunken drunkenness.
Only six years after the wedding, Vysotsky was given permission to travel abroad - for this, Marina Vlady even had to become a member of the French Communist Party for the time being.
"To be or not to be..."
They seemed to make up for lost time: they traveled the world a lot, walked. Marina arranged concerts in Paris for her husband. In Moscow, Vysotsky traveled to the only "Mercedes" in the Soviet Union. In Hungary, the director Messarosh filmed Vladi in the film "Their Two". To Vysotsky could come to his wife, the director came up with an episodic role for him. So the only picture was born, where Marina and Volodya played together.
Outwardly everything seems to be prosperous. But something already broke in him. With frenzied popularity among the people, the authorities do not recognize Vysotsky. His poems do not print, the plates do not release, many plays in which he begins to rehearse, the theater is forbidden to put. Family life at a distance, when it is humbly necessary to ask for visas, also does not give him joy. His emotions he suppresses alcohol and drugs.
Vysotsky tries to overcome his illness, to understand himself and like his Hamlet begins to think about the meaning of life and death.
"I attribute your cooling to me," Marina later analyzed later, "due to fatigue, which is not uncommon for spouses who have lived together for more than ten years. I did not know that it was morphine. And, most importantly, obviously, you despaired of surviving. I learn about your constant betrayals. I'm sick with jealousy. I did not immediately realize that all these are just attempts to cling to life, to myself to prove that you still exist. You try to tell me about it, but I do not hear it. Everything, a dead end. You can only scream about the main thing, and I only notice that on the surface. You cry for your love, I see only treason ...
... You, apparently, hoped for my help. With your drunkenness, we fought together. But in one night everything was said, and between us there are no more secrets. We seem to have returned to the roots of our love, we have nothing to hide from each other. You say: "Everything. I take myself in hand, because life has not been lived yet. " You tremble all the time, only this shiver is not from frost. On your grayed face, only your eyes are alive and speaking ... "
Two short words.
In 1978, Vysotsky decided to leave the theater. To stop the lead actor, Lyubimov invited him to play Svidrigailov in "Crime and Punishment". The play was released early next year, and this was Vysotsky's last role in the theater. It is symbolic that at the end of the play he disappeared into the hatchway, from where a trembling reddish light burst out. Marina was shocked by the finale.
The first heart attack with the artist happened at a concert in Bukhara on July 25, 1979. His life saved a direct injection in the heart. "I do not need this lady in black," Vysotsky said then, but he "tried" to do everything so as not to be late for her exactly one year later.
For a month and a half before his death Vysotsky wrote to Marina: "My love! Find a way to me by force. I just want to ask you - leave me hope. Only thanks to you I can return to life again. I love you and I can not let you feel bad. Believe me, later everything will fall into place, and we will be happy. " On the first disturbing call, Marina Vladi flew to Moscow, but every time she became more and more convinced that all her efforts to save Volodya were vain, he seemed to consciously go to its end.
On June 11, 1980, Vladi escorted Vysotsky to Moscow. On the way to the airport, they exchanged banal phrases: "Take care of yourself ... Do not do anything stupid" .... But both already felt that it was impossible to be far from each other.
July 18 Vysotsky played Hamlet for the last time. That evening, he felt bad, and the doctor behind the scenes periodically gave him injections. July 29 Volodya was to fly again to Paris, to Marina. Unfortunately, this was not destined to come true.
In the evening of the 23rd, their last telephone conversation took place. "And at 4 am on July 25," recalled Marina Vladi, "I wake up in a sweat, light a light, sit down on the bed. A bright red trace on the pillow. A huge crushed mosquito. I'm bewitched by this stain.
The phone rings. I know that I will hear the wrong voice. I know! "Volodya is dead!" That's all. Two short words spoken in an unfamiliar voice. "