Vera Arentova
The famous Soviet actress Vera Arentova died of COVID-19 on January 14 at the age of 79. She starred in the film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears", which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, after Vladimir Mensov, the husband of Vera Arentova and director of "Moscow Don't Believe in Tears", died on July 6 last year at the age of 81 due to the aftermath of covid-19.
Vladimir Mensov, the director of Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears
"Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears" is a former Soviet film familiar to mainland audiences, which tells the story of Katerina (Vera Arentova), a seventeen-year-old garment factory worker, posing as the professor's daughter at a party and meeting TV photographer Rachkov, and the two quickly fall in love. Soon Katerina was abandoned because of the revelation of her identity, but by this time she was pregnant, but the stubborn Katerina was not defeated, and she struggled to raise her daughter and study hard.
Sixteen years later, Katerina becomes the director of a large factory, and once she meets Gosha (Alexei Bataloff), a high-ranking electrician, the two quickly develop a sincere relationship. But since Gosha discovered her identity as the director of the factory, he has turned her away, which has made Katerina very painful. With the help of friends, the two finally reached an understanding after several setbacks and formed a partnership, and Katerina finally found true happiness.
The 1981 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film was contested by Japan's Shadow Samurai/Shadow Warrior, France's Last Subway, Hungary's Trust, the Soviet Union's Moscow Don't Believe in Tears, and Spain's Lair. As a result, "Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears" won the best foreign language film award for the hit "Shadow Samurai", and in the same year, the film was named best feature film in the former Soviet Union and received a national prize.
It is hard to imagine that when "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" was screened in the United States, there was always a long snake-like queue at the entrance of the theater, and the enthusiasm and grandeur of the audience forced the theater to temporarily decide to withdraw another "Ordinary People", which also won the Academy Award for Best Picture of the year, and use two screening halls to screen this former Soviet film at the same time.
According to statistics at the time, there were more than 30 countries in the world that bought the rights to the film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears".
In the former Soviet Union, the film had an audience of 68 million people in the five months of its first release in 1980, making it an extremely rare phenomenon.
Vera Arentova in the movie Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears
The success of "Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears" is inseparable from the performance of the heroine Katerina's character Vera Arentova. She brilliantly portrays the life course of the heroine from the age of 17 to the middle-aged. In particular, the line she said in the movie: "It wasn't until I was 40 that I felt like life had just begun." This sentence deeply touched the Chinese audience at that time and made many people feel empathy.
Interestingly, Vera Aliantova's once expressed disgust for the role. She said that she did not like Lyudmila's behavior and personality, and she did not want to be like Lyudmila for the rest of her life.
Author: Paparazzo
Editor: Chen Xihan