What places near Moscow became full-fledged heroes of the history of cinema
The Moscow region has always been loved by filmmakers: since the beginning of the last century, its landscapes and estates have become a full-fledged “hero” of films
Let's start with Malakhovka. From the Kazan station train goes about thirty kilometers, and during this time the Moscow rhythm is replaced by suburban tranquility. In 1911, the scenery of the village grew on the Malakhov wasteland: white huts under straw, whips, sunflowers. The French film company filmed here one of the first Russian films – “Katerin” based on the poem by Taras Shevchenko. Malakhovo Lake attracted the directors: according to the plot, the heroine had to take her own life. The French at the last minute changed the finale to happy, but the fact remains: Malakhovka stood at the origins of Russian cinema.
Then there was the dacha era. Fedor Chaliapin settled in the estate of the writer Teleshov, and the director Perestiani filmed episodes of the film “Honest Word” near the Malakhov lake with the participation of the daughters of the singer – Lydia and Irina.
Soviet times added stardom to Malakhovka with criminal irony. After “Gentlemen of luck” the phrase about the helmet, hidden in Malakhovka, went to quotes. According to the plot, in the Malakhov lake they were looking for the golden helmet of Alexander the Great. Whether this scene was shot here, still argue: some say “yes”, others call the Moskva River, others remind that the film was shot in Moscow and Samarkand. But the myth turned out to be stronger than the production truth: the movie went, but the phrase remained.
Later, Malakhovka appeared on the screen as the scene of detectives and criminal stories. Among them are “The Case of the Motley”, “The Broken Circle”. On Yuzhny street, 18 there was a dacha of the hero of the drama “Sold, Extended, Charm...”, and on Kalinin, 22 some scenes of the “Torn Circle” were filmed. But houses have been rebuilt, fences have grown. There is only a vague recognition: you walk down the street and realize that you have already seen this turn, but you do not remember in which movie. Today, Malakhovka is valued not by cinema, but by the old-fashioned atmosphere. The movie did not disappear completely, it became the background. Sometimes, switching channels late at night, someone recognizes their own yard on the screen.
Sukhanovo looks very different. Here, the cinema did not dissolve in the air - it was "held" by stones, ponds and rotunda. The Volkonsky estate, the XVIII century, a rotunda mausoleum, a park with ponds - all this stands as if the film crew had just left for lunch. The estate “began to be filmed” in 1936: “Dubrovsky” was filmed here. Then there were “Noble Robber Vladimir Dubrovsky” in 1988, “Petersburg secrets”, “Countess” in 1991, and in recent times – “Onegin”. The Rotunda Sukhanovo, which is called the “Temple of Venus”, in “Onegin”, became the gazebo of the Larins: in it Olga speaks with Lensky, and Tatiana with Onegin.
Between filming, the estate lives its own life. After the revolution, restoration work was carried out here, in Soviet times a dining room was arranged in the mausoleum-rotunda. Now on the territory there is a recreation house of the Union of Architects and a private school. Entrance is free, and it changes the optics: you don’t come to a museum where everything is behind glass, but to a place where cinema was one of the layers of life. Here, architects rest, children study, summer residents walk, and somewhere in between there is a rotunda that “played” the Larin estate. In Sukhanov cinema did not disappear, but was preserved. It became part of the landscape, like old lindens and ponds.
The third point - Pavlovskaya Sloboda under Istra - at first glance does not promise cinematic recognition. Ordinary suburban village, highway, roadside forest. But it was here, on the road near Pavlovskaya Sloboda, that the final of the “Diamond Hand” was filmed – the very chase in which Lelik races Semyon Semenovich to the car wash in order to “without noise and dust” remove a cast with diamonds from him, and Gesha Kozodoev rushes along on a red motorcycle. The final scenes of the forest chase were filmed in the Istra district on the Pavlovskaya Sloboda highway: a new "Moskvich" Chef walked along these roads, and a motorcyclist chased him. The frame knows millions, and the place - a few. The road along which the chase swept is still there, but it is almost impossible to recognize the set in it without a hint: no plaque, no plaque, no obvious sign. And there is a truth to this: the cinema left in the landscape itself - in the turn, in the roadside grass, in which there is nothing from the set, but who remember it better than any museum.
Cinema remains in the suburban landscape in different ways: somewhere becomes a dacha myth and lives in quotes, somewhere freezes in stone and waits for the next film crew, and somewhere dissolves on the road, leaving a trail that only those who know where to look will know.
