The Girls

Девчата (1962)

Timing: 1:36 (96 min)

7.5/10
114

All about film

Video 1

Photo 18

Actors and characters

Release date

1962-03-07

Country

Production

Mosfilm

Genre

Comedy, Romance

Budget

$0

Revenue

$0

Website

Director

Yuri Chulyukin

Actors

Nadezhda Rumyantseva, Nikolai Rybnikov, Lyusyena Ovchinnikova, Inna Makarova, Svetlana Druzhinina, Nina Menshikova, Stanislav Khitrov, Nikolay Pogodin, Viktor Baykov, Anatoli Adoskin
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Boris Bedny

Producer

L. Stulova

Operator

Timofei Lebeshev

Composer

Aleksandra Pakhmutova

Artist

Audition

Editing

Maria Kuzmina
All team (20)

• Yuri Chulyukin's wife at the time, Natalya Kustinskaya, insisted he get her the role of Tosya. Chulyukin refused, as Kustinskaya was too beautiful for Tosya, but to avoid offending her, he filmed a screen test with her, knowing that the artistic council would approve Rumyantseva.
• Vyacheslav Shalevich was originally cast as Ilya, but Rybnikov lost 20 kilograms specifically for the screen tests, and the role became his. Shalevich was offered an apology, but he didn't take offense and even praised Rybnikov, stating that he considered such weight loss the height of heroism.
• According to the director's vision, Ilya appears significantly older than Tosya on screen. In reality, actors Rybnikov and Rumyantseva are the same age.
• Rybnikov and Rumyantseva were particularly successful in the scenes where their characters quarrel, as they were actually at loggerheads during filming—Rybnikov was very upset that no role had been found in the film for his wife, Alla Larionova.
• For the role of the district inspector, the director invited his longtime friend and former classmate Vladimir Gusev without screen tests, but he refused.
• The lumberjacks' village was filmed in the Mosfilm studios, the outdoor scenes at a forestry enterprise in the Oleninsky district of the Tver region, and the finale in Yalta.
• Inna Makarova (Nadya) spoke poorly of the film—she strongly disliked that the director cut the scene of Nadya's parting with Ksan Ksanych: Nadya did not love him and remained waiting for true love.
• Valentina Talyzina auditioned for the role of Nadya, but she didn't fit the character type. The director wanted to cast Margarita Krinitsyna, whom he had known since VGIK, but her candidacy was rejected by the artistic council.
• Rumyantseva's character is 18 years old in the film, but the actress was already 30 at the time of filming.
• The train scene was filmed in the Ryazan region in Spas-Klepiki (on the stretch between Spas-Klepiki and Pilevo). An active narrow-gauge railway used for transporting timber was located near Moscow in the Ryazan region; that is where the film crew headed. Filming took two days. Nothing was constructed for the shoot (only one sign with the station name was nailed up, though it is illegible in the film). Local residents served as extras on the train. According to the plan, filming was supposed to take one day, but due to bad weather on the scheduled day, it was postponed until the following day.
• To mark the 50th anniversary of the film, the Local History Museum of the Yayva urban settlement organized an exhibition, collecting black-and-white photographs preserved by local residents and displaying them on a board. Stories related to the filming are also carefully preserved in Yayva.
• The chainsaws used in the film were made at the Dzerzhinsky Plant (ZiD) in the city of Perm. In the Soviet era, the plant was one of the largest in the Dzerzhinsky district of Perm. The saws bore the name "Druzhba" (Friendship), which remains well-known to this day.
• Location filming began in the Middle Urals, in the village of Yayva in the Perm region. Nothing was built specifically for the shoot; the canteen was operational. The actors stayed in the office of a former logging enterprise, which had to be completely repurposed, turning the offices into bedrooms.
• Residents of the village of Vizhay (approximately 8 km north of Yayva) took an active part in filming the crowd scenes. In 1962, the first screening of the film took place at the Vizhay House of Culture, attended by the director and the lead actors.
• When a rumor spread through the village that a movie was being filmed there, girls from neighboring villages flocked to see Nikolai Rybnikov in person. Everyone wanted to find out if he had a wife.
• Biting frosts persisted during filming, forcing everyone to bundle up in warm sheepskin coats, and Rybnikov almost suffered due to the severe cold. While filming the scene where Tosya brings lunch to the loggers in the clearing, Nikolai Rybnikov took an aluminum spoon and touched it with his tongue. The spoon froze to his tongue, and there was no way to pull it off. Filming had to be stopped to rescue the actor.
• When the first letter is delivered to Vera Kruglova, Tosya places it on a stool; in the next shot, the letter is no longer on the stool.