For me, this film, shot by a talented director at the turn of the 70s and 80s of the last century, was a real revelation, revealing to me those deep processes that were developing in Soviet society and not in the book version. These processes were perceived ambiguously back then, but a talented artist, himself treating them negatively in human terms, simply could not help but reflect this, because they were present in real life. A modern Russian, one of those who tries to think and analyze, says: “It’s even surprising how such a film could be shot at the end of the Brezhnev era!” From my point of view, as a person who lived at that time, albeit at a fairly young age, this is absolutely understandable. And the whole point is that in that distant time and in that era, Soviet cinema did not work for the market situation, as in modern Russia, but sought to reflect various aspects of Soviet reality, not disdaining the unsightly ones, which, of course, are in the life of any society. The film, like all Ryazanov’s films, has a great cast of actors who managed to embody the author’s main ideas: what a normal, decent person can afford, and what he should not afford. Where is it, this border between good and evil?
The film has many wonderful monologues that characterize that stage of development of Soviet society when many of its citizens began to live quite comfortably and could already afford to buy their own new domestic car. But Ryazanov, as a smart and observant artist, could not help but reflect that many quite decent people, having bought the coveted car, become completely different. After all, the monologues from the film speak for themselves: “We are all fighting for a place in the sun here, in the form of a garage”, “Yes, I like our government”, “The market director has shoved it at everyone”, “Oh, there was one half-decent one!”, “I am from the majority, everything depends on people like me”, “People! People! Humans! Come to your senses!”, “It was not the best night of my life”, “To betray in time is not to betray, it is to foresee”.
The director was given the concept of the idea for the film Garage by life itself. Having attended a meeting of a real garage cooperative of Mosfilm workers, Eldar Ryazanov was in real shock, so much so that he could not help but reflect what he heard and saw in the script of his new film. Already in the Russian era, in his memoir book The Sad Face of Comedy, or Finally Summed Up, Ryazanov admitted: “I came home after the meeting as if stunned, because among those present were many of my acquaintances, whom I considered decent. But there I saw a gathering of people devoid of conscience, who had forgotten about justice, indifferent and cowardly people. As if the masks of decency had suddenly fallen off, revealing the ugliness of their faces.” But what was even harder for the director to admit was his own reaction to what was happening during the meeting itself. He simply succumbed to the collective mood and did not stand up for those who had to “voluntarily-forcibly” lose their place for the cherished garages. Thus, the character of Professor Smirnovsky in the film is, in fact, Ryazanov himself, who, albeit later, showed human decency. Another interesting detail is that Eldar Ryazanov, like some of his colleagues, often liked to act in his own films in episodic roles, and in “Garage” he plays the head of the insect department, who “courageously” slept through the entire meeting of the cooperative on a stuffed hippopotamus and, as a result, received an “unlucky ticket with a cross”. Thus, Eldar Ryazanov punishes himself for the lack of principles he showed at the real meeting.
And of course, it is no coincidence that the film’s setting was a zoological museum that suddenly turned into a research institute for “Animal Protection from the Environment.” A smart viewer will understand that the stuffed animals hint at the not-so-human relationships between the film’s characters. And the work on the film itself was done in a rather unconventional manner – all scenes of the film were shot in chronological order, first evening, then night, and then early morning. The filming period was extremely short – only 24 days. To meet such a limited time frame, the cameramen filmed with three cameras at once, and the performers, who never knew which of them would end up in the foreground, had to play at full strength all the time.
The director selected the actors so that they would be similar to their characters in real life. Thus, the role of a single mother and junior research assistant was created for Liya Akhedzhakova, who had a sense of justice. And Valentin Gaft, whose character showers the members of the cooperative with compliments “left and right”, ended up on the film crew of “Garage” absolutely by accident. Ryazanov saw Alexander Shirvindt in this role, who was extremely busy at the theater. And Liya Akhedzhakova suggested Gaft to Ryazanov. This is just one of many happy coincidences that determined the success of this popular film. Thus, the charming actress Olga Ostroumova, who accidentally came to Ryazanov with a request to help him get her child into a kindergarten, got the role of Professor Smirnovsky’s daughter in the film. Andrei Myagkov, who in the film is the lab assistant Khvostov, who lost his voice while working with dolphins, had an equally interesting story. Later, Ryazanov himself admitted that he had creatively decided to take revenge on the actor in this way. The thing is that several years before “Garage”, during the filming of “Office Romance”, the actor spoke disapprovingly of Ryazanov’s poems “Nature has no bad weather…”. The entire group liked the poems, but Myagkov did not, and he paid for this with his voice in “Garage”.
The character of the market director Kushakova (actress Anastasia Voznesenskaya) occupies a special and significant place in the film. She symbolizes those new relationships that were born in Soviet society, when representatives of the service sector became important key figures in solving various everyday issues. Due to the fact that in the conditions of an excessively centralized economy, they, as they said then, “sat on the distribution” of food products and essential goods. This determined their magical omnipotence: to quickly get a tractor, the necessary workers and scarce building materials, etc. This is the first phase of the development of future cooperators, and subsequently new Russian businessmen with all the inherent vices and shortcomings of the era of initial accumulation of capital.
The public received the film with absolute enthusiasm, one might even say “with a bang”. After all, what a stellar cast! And an unconventional plot for that era. “I would very much like “Garage”, which focused on our shortcomings, to become obsolete as soon as possible… Here my civic feelings prevail over the emotions of an artist, for whom it is natural to want his creation to live as long as possible,” wrote Eldar Ryazanov after the premiere. But, unfortunately, “Garage” remains relevant even today.
