All language subtitles for Rerberg and Tarkovsky 2008.ENG

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a documentary cine-novel
by Igor Maiboroda

REHRBERG

The process of crafting an image

is informed by the
artist's worldview.

The worldview is shaped
by the artist's time,

country of residence,
his culture...

his daily interactions,

his unique intellectual and
physical attributes.

a final film

Rehrberg and Tarkovsky:
The other side of Stalker

Prologue

What is your favorite film?

The Mirror.

The Mirror is the
greatest achievement

in the legacies of G. Rehrberg
and Andrei Tarkovsky.

Rehrberg saved Tarkovsky when
he agreed to work on the film

after other DPs refused.

Rehrberg joined Tarkovsky
on his next film, Stalker.

After Chernobyl some
said that Tarkovsky

predicted the catastrophe.

But few people know about
the other side of Stalker:

the catastrophe that
took place on the set.

Like a nuclear reaction
spiraling out of control,

Tarkovsky lost his grip on reality

on the set of Stalker.

This led to a breakdown
of essential human bonds.

We could say that it foreshadowed
another great catastrophe:

the collapse of
the Soviet Union.

The humanist Tarkovsky
used Stalinist methods,

removing Rehrberg's name
from the film's final credits

and depriving him of
an artistic future,

even though it was Rehrberg

who helped Tarkovsky bounce
back after the breakdown.

Excuse me, is this the
way to Tomshino?

You should have
stuck to the road.

- And what is this?
- What?

Why are you sitting here?

I live here.

Here on the fence?

Are you looking for Tomshino
or my place of residence?

Ah, there's a house...

Imagine, I brought all the
instruments and left the key.

Maybe you have a
nail or a screwdriver?

No. I don't have a nail.

Why are you so nervous?
Give me your hand.

Go on, I'm a doctor.

Don't distract me,
I'm counting.

Do I need to call my husband?

You don't have a husband.
No ring. Where's the ring?

I was always interested
in human emotions.

Emotion and close-up
are worth more

than any landscape
or antique column...

I am interested in the portrait.

You can look at it endlessly.

You should film it, by the way.

I've been looking at that
Rafael for 58 years.

That's something.

There was a kind of film
renaissance in the 60's.

About three years after
we did The Mirror, I said:

Boys, we're heading
into a decline.

Nobody believed me.

Here we are. I didn't think
it would last this long.

It's been 17 years.

Rehrberg predicted the
decline of Soviet film

the same year he shot his
second film with Tarkovsky.

A lot of bad rumors came
out of that collaboration,

but Rehrberg kept silent.

He made fewer
and fewer films.

I was able to help Rehrberg

during an especially
bad stretch.

And he told me the real story
behind the making of Stalker.

I saw that he was
still haunted by it.

He complained to me

that he couldn't find
anything worth filming.

I said: "You told me all
about your childhood."

"Wouldn't it be great if
people could see that?"

Rehrberg said: "Let's
do it together."

I know that Rehrberg had
no intention of dying.

Two weeks before he died he
told me that he was reading

Hegel's dialectics and Losev's
writings on aesthetics.

He said he had to make
three more films -

the autobiography was
the most important of them.

That film will never happen.

We can only make
a documentary

as a tribute to a great
cinematographer,

whose style was
often imitated.

They called it "shooting
a la Rehrberg."

But a copy could never
rival the original:

the last of the Rehrbergs.

The line of Russian Rehrbergs
begins with Jan Rehrberg,

who emigrated from western Europe
on the invitation of Peter I.

Rehrbergs fought for Russia,
built its ships, railroads, factories,

St. Isaac's Cathedral
in St. Petersburg.

Fedor Ivanovich,
Rehrberg's grandfather,

was the first artist
of that dynasty

It was important for me,
the maker of REHRBERG,

to recreate the events
on the set of Stalker.

I collected witness
accounts and materials,

which will be shown here
for the first time.

You will learn the bitter truth
as you hear this tragic tale.

I found moral justification
for this project

in Losev's writings on
Renaissance aesthetics -

the same work that Rehrberg
was studying at his death.

The Renaissance is famous
for its archetypes

of falsehood and treachery,
foul murder and vengeance,

cruelty and opportunism,
and all manner of passions:

this is what we call "the other
side of the Renaissance,"

i.e. the underside of titanism.

A titan wants to rule
over all of creation.

But he always encounters
other titans,

who also want
to rule over all.

The piles of corpses at the end
of Shakespeare's tragedies

are symbols of the
inevitable demise

of the titanic aesthetics
of the Renaissance.

I have no interest in making
bad fiction at the moment.

I've been shooting ads
for three years.

When we came to the agency
someone said to us:

Do you want Rehrberg?

I said: you're crazy, he's
way out of our league.

Not a problem, they said.

Things were so bad that
he would call me to ask

what he should charge
for a commercial.

That's where the country
was at that time.

And not much has changed.

Is there a specific location
that could tell us:

it is 1995 and this is
what's happened to us.

The Manege...

Moscow, 1995. Manege Square

The square is in
the city center.

The Arena is at the
center of the square.

The square is the brainchild
of the architect Osip Bove.

The wooden structure
spanning 45 meters

is a daring feat
of engineering.

Moscow. March 14, 2004.
Manege Square.

participating in the film:

Mstislav Rostropovich
Natalia Gutman

Victor Astafiev
Marina Tarkovskaia

Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovskii

Nikita Mikhalkov
Ia Savvina

Pavel Lebeshev
Irina Antonova

Mikhail Romadin
Aleksandr Boym

Shavkat Abdusalamov
Vadim Yusov

Sergei Kozlov
Oleg Gedrovich

Evgenii Tsymbal
Viktor Kosakovskii

Yurii Ilienko (Ukraine)
Vadim Alisov

Jerzy Wojcik (Poland)
Evgenii Guslinskii

Olga Surkova
Mariana Chugunova

Igor Korshich (Slovenia)

appearing in
archival materials:

Aleksei Losev
Evgenii Mravinskii

Sven Nyqvist
Andrei Tarkovskii

Larisa Tarkovskaia
Gleb Panfilov

The Author of the Image

Moscow, 2002.
Vvedesnkoe cemetery

I met Rehrberg in Ljubliana.

I kept watching him,
because to me

he is a model of a
refined human being,

and a great artist
of cinema.

Rehrberg came up to
me and shook my hand.

He said: thank you
for your films.

I said: thank you
for your work,

for The Mirror.

I regret that he did
not make many films,

we would have been far
richer and wiser for it.

He suffered because he
had to make commercials.

I know he did not
love that work.

He dreamt of making fiction.

Solitude was a great
burden for him.

Rerberg is an astonishing creature.

I feared him.

The name Rehrberg is
well-known in Moscow.

It was not one man, it
was an entire lineage.

First, he was a genius.
Second, he was my spiritual kin.

The fact that he was a
musician is clear from his films.

I called and asked him to write
something about Andrei -

He refused. He said:
I will not do it.

It was his nature:
he burnt himself up.

He once said: I'll go
to Switzerland

and wander around Geneva
with a walking stick.

A dreamer. A shy romantic. One
drink and he's off to Switzerland.

His wife would say:
Cemetery! not Switzerland.

Why is it that everyone in
Russia has to suffer?

Everyone with a drop of talent
must end this life too soon.

The DP is a key job.
They call it "the wife."

There were few directors
of Tarkovsky's caliber

that Rehrberg could work with.

When he worked with my
brother on his first film

he got to a place that made
it very hard to go down.

You could only go up, or
stay at the same level.

Dear Pavel Mikhailovich,

I would like to inform
you of our progress.

The situation leaves
much to be desired.

The biggest problem is
the lack of camera crew.

Rehrberg has to do
everything himself,

which reflects
on the quality.

It is very hot and dusty.

Every day something
happens to the camera,

we have to re-shoot constantly
because of technical problems.

And this is Rehrberg's first film.

I am worried for both of us.
Yours, Konchalovskii.

Now it seems exciting
and exotic.

At the time I hated it.
I refused to go.

Andron was known
as a kind of playboy...

I didn't understand that we didn't
need a "view" out the window.

He said: just put
up some white.

I said: how could you do that?
We need to paint something.

He said: it's all going to be
overexposed anyway.

I couldn't get it. I only understood
when we saw the rushes:

when you expose for the interior,
the exterior will be overexposed.

- And he explained it?
- Yes, I didn't know about it.

He was the first
to shoot contre-jour.

They recalled him and told
us to get a new DP.

Andron appealed to Yusov:

they tell me it's all garbage,
and it's my first film...

Despite differences between
Rehrberg and Yusov,

the latter said:
I insist on Rehrberg.

He was a risk-taker.
A kamikaze.

A DP that's really a stuntman.

That's exactly how he
was. I second that.

It's one thing to be a stuntman and
know what's up and what's down.

And he knew it.

He would raise contrast with highly
concentrated developer

and the image really
popped out.

We had bad film stock,
bad cameras,

but since Communism =
Socialism + Electrification...

I had as many lights
as I can dream of...

I see Nykvist doesn't have
enough lights on Sacrifice.

I would have put up 5,
and he only has 3.

Only his experience and
his taste saves him.

He brought to cinema an ability
to sculpt phenomenal portraits,

and to use lighting realistically,
even hyper-realistically.

Natalia Arenbasarova, the star
of The First Teacher,

received the "best actress" award
at the Venice festival.

And a memo appeared in
Rehrberg's personal file:

The film, which has won
a prize in Venice,

and international acclaim,

owes its success to
the cinematographer.

Rehrberg was the driving
force on that picture,

probably even more
so than Andron.

I think it was simply
a remarkable brain

that could only think in
terms of screen images.

Were there similarities
in the working process

of Tarkovsky and
Konchalovsky?

Or are they different?

They were both very good at
taking other people's ideas.

They are different, but they
were similar in their youth.

They collaborated on
the screenplay of Rublev.

But as different people they
went different ways.

I find Konchalovsky to be the
smartest of our directors.

Unlike Tarkovsky,
he knew his flaws

and always tried to
make up for them.

His education and worldview
were far broader

than is typical for
a cinematographer.

One of the Italian
directors tells me:

I never see DPs getting
involved with the script.

How can you not, if everything
stems from the source?

We also have a couple of good DPs
that say: that's not by business.

How can you get to the heart of the
matter if you don't understand it?

Or if all of us
missed it somehow?

We have to work at
it, all together.

This has always been
important for you?

Yes, and sometimes I
got into trouble for it.

For Rehrberg crafting the
image is not a job,

it is a quest for truth.

His life was that quest.

Andrei Tarkovsky
said these words.

The quests for truth of these
two image-philosophers

crossed paths on the
set of The Mirror.

Rehrberg hung up the
Anthenian School

on the same wall,
where long before

his father had hung
the portrait of Rafael:

one of the greatest
humanist painters,

who saw painting as a way
toward an understanding

of man, nature and society.

They believed that reason
and beauty will triumph

only when we learn to respect
each other's opinions.

This is the only existing
footage of Losev.

Until then Losev refused
to grant interviews.

His wife and I convinced him
to let himself be filmed.

I knew this was
for all eternity,

and so I called Rehrberg.

I just had to say
one word: Losev.

He agreed right away.

And he said, I am not
doing this for money.

Rehrberg and I helped Losev
get up and move to an armchair.

And Rerberg said to me:
this is not about film.

I was surprised to
hear it from a man

whose whole life is
about the image.

He said: this is not about film,
we have to capture him.

We had very little film.

I had to make a sign for Rehrberg
to run the camera.

We shot one roll.

Rehrberg changed magazines.

I'm rubbing my ear
until it's all red -

and he's just looking on -
he doesn't even see me.

He was only paying
attention to Losev.

Real freedom is God. Why?

God does what he wills.

Nobody else can do this.

There is nothing and nobody
that can limit his freedom.

Religion is a doctrine
of freedom.

That's the main thing.

And it is reflected everywhere,
politics, contemporary life...

In 1929 the philosopher Losev
publishes Dialectic of the Myth.

He talks about fetishization and
deification of the social myth

of Communist ideology.

Controversial passages are
excised by censorship,

but Losev reinserts
them at publication.

The book and its author
are arrested.

Life is more complicated than logic,
he said to his interrogators.

He explained his action in
a letter from the camps:

I was suffocating because
I could not speak.

This is why I had to reinsert
those passages.

I knew it was dangerous
but the need to speak,

to express one's individuality,

exceeds all thought of danger
for a philosopher.

Losev and other
seekers of truth

were labeled "enemies
of the people"

and put in concentration camps
for reeducation.

Glory and freedom await
the glorious prisoner-fighters.

The White Sea Canal was
built in two years.

Approximately 100,000 prisoners
died during construction.

The first ship to sail the canal
was named Chekist.

Losev survived, but
lost his eyesight.

He did not betray
his convictions.

He did not publish again
until after Stalin's death.

The canal conquers
human nature.

Terrible nightmares
haunted Losev in prison.

He cannot climb up to the train car
and the train leaves without him.

Or he cannot enter
into his own house.

There are things Andrei
never talked about.

This film was addressed directly
to members of his family,

but it was received
by millions of viewers.

The effect of a work of genius,
a director of genius,

forgive me for saying it,
and a genius DP.

Rehrberg was one of the
first DPs in Russia

who could film things
in their history.

He showed us objects
in their dialectic,

even in a dialectic of their
disintegration, their decline...

The Mirror was highly
acclaimed in the USSR.

The government ignored the film
and suppressed its release.

I don't see any metaphors there,
and I don't like metaphors.

For me the situation is not
metaphorical, but realistic.

Metaphor is very dangerous.

If it is highly multi-layered,
then it can work.

But I don't like reading and
writing "between the lines,"

as they like to
do in Russia.

The point is not using objects
that you can't fully understand.

Andrei made films about himself
and I - about myself...

Andrei and I shared a worldview
and a love of Leonardo.

Beauty in the struggle of light
with darkness, said Leonardo.

That is both my
view and my job.

I called him and asked him to write
something about Andrei

He refused. He said
I won't do it.

Regrettably I only made
one film with Andrei.

Fate parted us.

When Rehrberg came to Ljubliana
for the third time

I showed him what Tarkovsky
wrote about him in his journals.

Everything shot in
Tallin with Rehrberg

should be thrown into the
trash twice over.

Rehrberg is fully responsible.

He trampled on the principles
of creation and talent.

He thought himself
a great talent.

He debased and destroyed talent,
as he destroyed himself.

A drunkard, a shameless,
a godless libertine -

he's finished, as far
as I'm concerned.

After reading this Rehrberg
looked up at the sky and said:

Andrei, why did you do it?

Yes, it's not a good story, as far
as our friendship goes.

Is friendship compatible
with cinema?

I don't know, but I think Fellini,
for example, needed friendship.

Ioselliani needs friendship.

Andron doesn't.
Tarkovsky doesn't.

As long as you can use this person,
you keep him around.

Then you don't
need him anymore.

These are complexes
of filmmakers:

Look at me, look how
important I am, etc.

This is the ugly
side of cinema.

It is not good for an
artist, and so I left.

This painting, called
Familiar Faces,

is dedicated to the memory
of friendship and sincerity.

Romadin painted his
contemporaries,

the free intellectual elite,

whom he had known
and worked with.

They came of age
during the Thaw.

It was a brief renaissance

after the long winter
of Stalin's rule.

This painting was shown many
times in the Manege -

which itself had become a
symbol of the Thaw.

Exercizhaus, as it
was first called,

was used for over a century
as army training grounds

No one thought to maintain
the wooden structure,

the roof-beam gradually gave way
and columns had to be put in.

It was no longer possible
to march and ride horses inside.

At the height of the Thaw

the Manege was turned
into an exhibition hall,

the locus of a new
era of Soviet art.

But the spirit of the
Exercishaus demanded

that artists march
in formation.

Party leaders visited the
anniversary exhibition.

They saw such
paintings as this:

this work could only
cause indignation.

The sculptor Neizvestny tried
to defend his ugly creations.

It started out back in VGIK, I was
shooting some class assignment,

and I wanted to shoot
the back of a steamship.

Makarova was
my supervisor.

She said: how can it
be from the back?

We want to see the face.

The back expressed
more than the front.

I graduated in 1960 from
a Russian film school,

but my true teachers were
Sven Nykvist and Gianni di Venanzo.

I come from an intellectual family.
My father trained as an architect.

He worked in book
design and illustration.

My mother is a musician,
from a family of musicians.

Her cousin, my uncle is
the cellist Rostropovich.

As a professor at the
Moscow Conservatory

his mother was, to some
extent, my mentor,

when I was a
young student.

When I first came to the house
of Professor Kazalupova,

I was about 10
or 11 at the time,

it was a total shock.

The place was full of art, like
a palace: vases, paintings.

Ivan Rehrberg was a highly
cultured man, very refined.

My aunt used to make
fun of Rehrberg:

he's so cultured,
she'd say, so...

Ivan Rehrberg became
well-known in the '20s

for his drawings
and watercolors.

He was a man of
some importance.

He was also a master of
woodcarving and xylography,

and famous as a designer
of book covers.

The book cover is special
type of graphic art.

Ivan Rehrberg brought a certain
expressiveness to his designs.

He used silhouette figures in his
canonical illustrations

of Pushkin's Little Tragedies,
published in 1937.

This was the year of
Pushkin's centenary.

It revived the
cult of Pushkin,

who had been
declared a maniac

by Soviet psychiatrists after
the 1917 Revolution.

Ironically, the 100th anniversary
of Pushkin's murder

was the year of the
bloodiest repressions.

The state rehabilitated
a dead poet,

and destroyed the living poets
of its Revolution.

Meyerhold, the great theater
director and reformer,

lived in this house
until 1937.

His apartment was
just above Rehrberg's,

where Gosha Rehrberg
was born in 1937 -

Georgi Ivanovich Rehrberg.

Twenty five years later,
as a young assistant DP,

Rehrberg was assigned
to film a landscape

for an adaptation of Pushkin's
story "The Blizzard."

This encounter with Pushkin was
a good omen in his life:

on his next film he would be
promoted to full-fledged DP.

What has influenced you
in your film work?

My father, I suppose.

He was an illustrator and
painted in his free time -

he was my first influence.

I studied with Rehrberg
in the same studio at VGIK -

it was a very strong studio -

and we formed a small group
within the studio:

Knizhinskij, Rehrberg,
myself, Beliankin...

We spent a lot of time
at Rehrberg's house:

his father had a
phenomenal library -

more than a library, really -

he had been collecting a visual
arts library for many years,

made up from old editions,
which were then suppressed.

We had access to people,

who were completely
effaced at the time:

Kandinsky, Klee,
Miro, Bosch...

Judging by the illustrations
kept in the home archive

Ivan Rehrberg focused on internal
states and minute psychology:

these were not typical at the time
and could be misunderstood.

The situation at
home was difficult

because Ivan Rehrberg was
paralyzed for many years.

Whenever I saw him
he was in his chair,

and it must have been
hard on the boy -

and on his mother, who had to
take care of everything.

She was an interesting person:

she was a stern
woman, naturally.

Her father was a Cossack,
Semen Kazalupov,

a strong and difficult man.

She was a remarkably
well-organized woman,

demanding much of others...

I think I was very lucky:

that family tradition
of high expectations -

Rehrberg brought it
into our little group:

we weren't just drinking
vodka in his room;

we were trying to access a
culture that was closed to us.

Rehrberg's house
was full of color,

and he was always
on to something new:

cars, painting, or he was
going after women.

I can understand him...
Nothing wrong with that.

But despite his great ambitions,
and Renaissance-like aspirations

he was left with nothing,
except a collection of people

who either envied him
or simply disliked him.

But he did attain the reputation
of a true artist.

In Russia I am counted among
the so-called painterly school.

I love painting, especially
the Italian and Dutch Renaissance.

And of course the renaissance
of the 20th century:

abstract painting and the
Russian avant-garde.

The only thing I don't
like is Expressionism.

I have been learning from
painting all of my life.

I would count myself among
the poetic naturalists,

if there is such a term.

Once I came to his
house and I thought:

well, we're gonna have
some fun or something,

and I see an easel and he's
painting a copy of Poliakov.

That copy of a Poliakov back
there, I did it in '72.

That was not too easy,
but not too hard either.

Next to it is an
original composition,

I tortured it for a whole
month, until I understood

that I can put together
three colors, and no more.

So this is a quarter of
the original canvas,

I couldn't bring it all together,
so it hangs there as a lesson.

Rehrberg is lucky because he
comes from a line of artists.

The brothers Ivan and
Fedor were known

in the artistic circles of
Moscow in the mid-19th c.

Fedor was famous,
a good painter.

He was well-known as a teacher
and had many students.

Fedor Rehrberg founded Russia's
first private art school

that prepared students for
the Imperial Art Academy,

and the Moscow school of painting,
sculpture and architecture.

In 1906 Malevich, the founder
of Constructivism,

enrolled as a student
at the school.

Rehrberg belonged to
the realist school,

but he was tolerant of
his students' experiments.

He introduced Malevich into
the artistic circles of Moscow

and helped him get his artworks
into prestigious exhibitions.

Fedor Rehrberg knew all the
great masters of his time:

Serov, Repin,
Korovin, Vrubel...

He was one of the founders
of the Moscow Artists' League.

The Tretiakov Gallery has
his painting "Boats,"

which Rehrberg thought
one of his best.

Financial troubles forced Fedor
Rehrberg to sell his works.

It would be impossible to
gather his paintings,

scattered across museums
and private collections.

We had to make do with what
remained with his heirs.

This is a portrait of
his brother Ivan.

Ivan Rehrberg was a
military engineer and architect,

intimately linked to this building
where I am standing today.

He was an assistant
to Roman Klein,

chief architect of the
Fine Arts Museum,

and was involved with several
important buildings in Moscow,

like the Kiev Station...

as well as the Central
telegraph building,

and the Italian Renaissance building
inside the Kremlin compound.

Today it is occupied by the office
of the president of Russia.

The Rehrbergs have contributed
significantly to our culture.

Rehrberg has some serious roots,
as far as art is concerned.

The family overestimated
German Romanticism, I think.

Since my father and grandfather
grew up in that milieu

they were overly
partial to it.

German Romanticism is very narrow
in its aims and its worldview.

Basically it is not altogether
far from a decline.

This is why I quickly shifted to
the Renaissance and stayed there.

One will always have one's
youthful formal exercises -

I started out with that,
more or less off-course.

But then realism came out
ten times stronger for me...

The breadth of his cultural
heritage is evident

in all his films
that we know.

I think he drew liberally
on various sources

to create his cinema,
his vision of cinema.

My dream was to record Bach's
suites, accompanied by images.

Who could do it better
than anybody else?

Of course, Rehrberg.

First, he was a genius.
Second he was family -

spiritual family. A lot closer to me
than, say, his mother -

and then he was exposed
to those Bach suites

since they were
played at his house...

The six suites of Bach
last 2hrs and 40min.

It was the hardest
job of my life.

In terms of responsibility
and intensity.

The church is 300m long,
12 degrees C.

It was cold...
The poor man.

Freezing cold,
I'm telling you.

Rehrberg was freezing
and I was freezing.

A phenomenal man with
a great work ethic,

a fantastic talent.

Those five weeks we spent
together working

stayed with me like an island of
happiness, of friendship -

that time we spent together
working on Bach.

Rehrberg came from the
Kazalupov family,

all of them were professors
at the Conservatory.

For them cinema was
not a serious art.

They were self-
sufficient people,

whereas a cinematographer
is a dependent -

especially if he
is an artist.

And Rehrberg had
a difficult time.

Even if you are the 1st violin,
the conductor is your master.

The conductor is
like the director.

His working with Mravinsky -
that was a great story.

I was there too. He invited
me to the rehearsal.

The sense of piety that he
experienced at this time -

his relationship
with Mravinsky -

In my life I encountered two people
that had great influence on me

with their human dignity and
the power of their art:

the first is the famous Russian
conductor Mravinsky.

I filmed him conducting
nine symphonies,

and I still remember
and love him forever.

The second was of course
Andrei Tarkovsky,

with whom I had shot,
regrettably, only one film.

Fate parted us.

The Stalker Chronicle,
Part I

The filming of Stalker was a
journey into the Inferno,

similar to the one undertaken
by the film's characters.

The film was made
three times:

some episodes were filmed
6,7,8 times, maybe more.

I know Boym who worked
with them, and Shavkat.

I know Rehrberg who
worked on Stalker -

none of these people is ever
mentioned in the credits.

The only artist there is
Tarkovsky - it is unfair.

There was a large crew
working on the film.

Everyone loved and
supported him.

By accident I happened to
be in the audience -

there were lots of people,
including the studio heads -

watching the rushes
of Stalker.

It was astonishing footage.

"Andrei, that's out of focus,
you have to reshoot."

Sizov said that out loud.

For me it was a shock - the collapse
of that partnership.

Why? How?

"Rehrberg won't get away
with it, she said.

You'll see they'll
never work together."

Rehrberg was
very upset.

I know that he wanted
to make that film.

When I feel sad I can always find
him on TV or on the radio.

I turn it on and
he's right there.

I won't say anything
interesting.

Mravinsky would be
very succinct

after a performance
of the 4th of Brahms

or Shostakovich
or Tchaikovsky.

It was short, succinct - he
was already very old then.

He held conversations with
himself, and with God.

And he was prepared to
speak for 7 minutes.

Let's get back to Stalker.

Do we have to?

As long as we're here, I'd like to get
something out of you...

Talking about Stalker

Moscow, 1997, Rehrberg's apartment.

participating: Georgiy Rehrberg,

Marianna Chugunova,
Evgenij Tsymbal.

As long as we're here, I'd like to get
something out of you...

Strugatskii writes
that I ran out...

I think that is not fair.

I did not run out,
I was removed.

I never doubted that.
Right, Masha?

- Of course.
- Andrei's first mistake was...

he picked a text that
did not fit his goals.

It seems he outlived it; he did not
want to make a second Solaris.

From the diaries of Tarkovsky,
published in Paris,

translated from
the French:

"1973. I read the novel
by the Bros. Strugatsky

titled 'A picnic by
the roadside.'

It could be turned into
a marvelous screenplay.

Must think about making money
at Central Asian studios

if I'm going to
repay debts."

He told me he's been
to a number of locations

and that he's still looking
for the Zone.

A place that resulted
from an atomic explosion.

I told him that there is a
place in Tajikistan -

old Chinese mines - a kind
of lunar landscape.

He said, that's exactly
what I'm after.

Something dead.
I said: it's pretty dead.

There's a railway there and
a small steam engine...

Proposal for a fiction film
to be titled "Wishing Machine."

The action is set in our times, in
an unnamed capitalist country.

Several years before the
start of the action

an alien spaceship lands
near a small town.

The aliens have gone, but they
left behind a Zone

full of otherworldly
mysteries.

Militarized corporations attempt
to seize alien treasures,

particularly the Machine
that grants the wishes

of anyone who
comes near it.

The Wishing Machine is
protected by deadly traps.

A certain "Vulture" - a man
without honor or principles -

a space "poacher"
as it were -

is promised a
"pile of greenbacks"

by the agents of a
militarized corporation.

He penetrates into the Zone
to retrieve the Machine.

The film combines
elements of a thriller

with progressive
philosophical ideas

and a critique of
bourgeois ideology.

The authors: Arkadii
and Boris Strugatsky.

He arrived with the
art director Boym

and we set off for Isfara.

I showed him the location and
he approved it right away.

Tarkovsky was impressed by
what he saw in Isfara,

and believed that the Wishing
Machine created here

would grant his greatest wish,
as his diaries suggest:

to make his next
film in Italy.

He had spent
several years

petitioning the Film Committee

to let him adapt
Dostoevsky's The Idiot

and one of
Hoffmann's tales.

After a string of refusals
he sent a letter

to the upcoming Congress
of the Communist Party.

The Film Committee
received a directive:

Let Tarkovsky film.

He had the freedom
to film anything he wanted,

but he passed over Dostoevsky
and Hoffmann

for a duo of science-
fiction writers

trying to break into cinema:
the Strugatskys.

Here is what the curator of Mosfilm
had to say about the script:

"The hero betrays a child for the
temptation of a 'golden fleece.'

This may be a powerful trope,
but we are baffled

by his psychologically
unmotivated actions."

The script committee
warned Tarkovsky

about serious flaws in the script,
by then renamed Stalker.

They asked him to rework the
dialogues and monologues.

But Tarkovsky saw these warnings
as a conspiracy against him.

"You must make good
out of evil,

because that is
all you've got."

The authors chose
this flashy line

from R.P. Warren's novel
"All The King's Men"

for the epigraph of their
sci-fi comic-novel.

Similarly, in his adaptation,

Tarkovsky decided to bank on
"eastern" flavor and exoticism.

We spent hours
wandering the streets,

he was very pleased
with everything.

I remember he was ill when he
came and he said to me:

I'd love to get to a sauna.

I said, there's a Turkish-
style bath nearby.

We went over
to the old town -

that bath isn't
there anymore -

it was underground
with arches...

The owner was a friend of mine -
and he kneaded him good.

Massaged him, worked
him over thoroughly,

went through several runs,
hot and cold, soap, etc.

We had green tea
and he felt wonderful.

He would talk about it
many times afterwards.

We chose a location in Isfara and
sent all our equipment there.

The AD was meeting the
caravan on location

when suddenly there
was an earthquake.

The AD called and said - the hotel
is nothing but rubble.

There are corpses
in the courtyard.

How can we go?

How did Tarkovsky
make his decision?

Tarkovsky... was a
complicated man.

He never liked
making decisions.

In this particular case he
made me the scapegoat,

because I said that morally
we had no right to go.

Both of us had
small children -

how can we go to
a place of disaster?

Andrei claimed that "the
crew refused to go."

He was very upset that
he couldn't do it in Isfara.

Nature kept him form
making it in a Zone

that really looked like a site
of a nuclear disaster.

That was the first
crack in the film.

Nature was the first stone
that fell out of this wall.

Nature and literature are
always inextricably linked.

I try to read something and understand
it as though for the first time.

And the success of this insight depends
on the atmosphere of the piece.

The text is not as important
as this atmosphere

that had given birth to
it in the first place,

and that is meant to be
communicated to the audience.

And the matters of timbre,
technique, everything else -

all of these depend on the right
sense of atmosphere.

When you lose this
sense - you're lost.

We went to western Ukraine and
found another location.

It was the outskirts
of a smelting factory.

- Similar in nature...
- Right.

Andrei said: it's
toxic here.

First earthquake,
now toxic.

It was pretty toxic,
but you could still film.

But the real issue
was something else -

he wanted to go to the
midlands. Unconsciously.

We couldn't find anything,

but the combination of this
so-called midlands climate:

i.e. brush, hazel-wood, etc. - with
the abandoned power plant -

that we discovered
completely by chance -

this combination finally pleased
him - more or less.

I'm telling you all this

because the film started breaking
down right then and there.

- You mean Kaidanovsky?
- Kaidanovsky also.

According to the script
Kaidanovsky is an evil man

who goes to the Zone in order
to destroy these people

and to win back his
daughter's health.

In the final version he
became a kind of... guide,

or a Christ... basically it was
turned upside down.

Why did you hit me?
He wants to destroy it!

He wants to destroy your
hopes! Give it to me!

When I saw the final version
it was turned upside down.

I think Andrei was completely
unprepared for this film.

He was busy staging
Hamlet - at the Lenkom.

I would say that Shakespearian
tragedy, Hamlet in particular,

is not about the physical
death of the hero

brought about by his obsession
with vengeance or justice.

The point is that he basically
condemns himself to death

when he sets out
to right his "crooked age."

A man that devotes himself
to the service of mankind,

to the task of repairing the
ruptured thread of time -

by surrendering himself to
the historical process,

by becoming a kind of catalyst -

he invariably dissolves
in this process.

This danger of perishing in
the name of progress -

of disappearing completely -

that is the tragedy of Hamlet
because he is dissolved in it

and serves merely as a catalyst
of this historical movement.

Remember, he used to run from the set
to the theater for the applause -

I think he could not
do two things at once.

Naturally, like any serious creative
person... This, that, and the play...

A play, a bit in the circus - this is
no way for an honest artist.

He was always taking up
a script that he'd already...

...already outlived,
overcame...

...and he had rehearsals every day -
he was all about Hamlet.

The worst of it is that the entire
preparatory process -

the creative process that takes
place at one's desk -

it's not just a matter of
learning the score -

you have to keep in mind that you
will be dealing with living beings.

How do you communicate it?

For the record we should say that
the fact that I had removed

Larisa, Tarkovsky's wife,
from the lead role

earned me a blood enemy.

I remember that.

Larisa Tarkovskaia wanted to play
the part of the Stalker's wife.

She had her debut
in The Mirror

as the woman who trades
a rooster for earrings -

a grim scene, where
they kill the rooster.

Larisa wanted to play
Tarkovsky's mother -

she thought herself both wife and
mother - and probably daughter.

She wanted to play
all the women parts.

When the struggle for the lead
in The Mirror took place

she was not yet
confident of her place,

and Tarkovsky chose Terekhova,
who played it marvelously.

Larisa was very offended,
and hated Terekhova.

The two had a very
difficult relationship,

and some scenes she had
to be... taken off the set...

You have to know Terekhova,
who's completely crazy too -

It was not pretty.

It was pretty tense.

When Tarkovsky decided
to do theater,

and they were thinking
about casting Hamlet,

Larisa wanted
to play Gertrude.

And again Terekhova
got the part over her.

Larisa was very sure
of her acting talents

and she really wanted to play
the wife in Stalker.

Rehrberg was fiercely
opposed to it.

The entire crew
was against it.

There were screen
tests: Larisa did one.

I think it was not a
convincing performance.

Then they shot a test
with Alisa Freundlich.

Alisa was seated in a static pose
before a static camera

and you could do with her
anything you wanted.

And she did two takes -
absolutely killer.

The main thing you felt
a life story with Freundlich.

You felt those years lived
with this Stalker,

that suffering that
her life has been.

On the one hand there was Freindlich,
who just astonished us.

Andrei even wanted us to put that test
in to the final cut of the film.

Then he said, let's put the audio track -
she'll never do it like that again.

How could a director
get such an idea?

You can't film somebody and use
a different audio track.

Freundlich even got mad: does he really
think I can't do it again?

He was not an
actor's director.

There are actors' directors,
that wasn't him.

If an actor wasn't up to par
he did not care that much.

He could do with a fake tear and
Pergolesi on the soundtrack

to cover the bad actor.

Because he was always using
every other means of expression.

There was a pretty
harsh conversation...

When Andrei came
to look at the set -

and he was pretty drunk -

we still did not know who we
were filming the next day.

I said: you still haven't picked an
actress. We shoot tomorrow.

They spoke in the next room,
near where I was working.

Rehrberg came right out:
Who do we shoot?

The actress?
Or the wife?

Tarkovsky was vague.
He said: what do you think?

Rehrberg said exactly
what he thought.

He was right, but
he was pretty blunt.

Tarkovsky said, I'm not
my wife's paramour.

Of course we'll film Alisa.

But Rehrberg found himself
with a very powerful enemy.

Larisa never forgave
him for it.

Larisa believed that Rehrberg
deliberately lit her badly

at her screen test.

That he did it to keep
her out of the film.

She said: he won't
get away with it!

You'll see that Rehrberg will
never work with him again.

She was very supportive of Rehrberg
during the filming of The Mirror.

But his lifestyle was
not to her liking -

she was afraid Andrei
would take after him.

There were always some kind of
conflicts between them,

but there was
nothing serious.

And they did begin work
on the Stalker together.

"It really is like a marriage,
the director and the DP..."

"ITALIAN DIALOGS" Rome, 1982
archival recording.

Panfilov: "It really is like a marriage,
the director and the DP..."

Tarkovsky: "Sure!
A DP is crucial!"

Panfilov: "A divorce
is final here!"

Tarkovsky: "No going back!"

- You have to look after them.
- And their nature shows...

Larisa: Andrei looked
after him too much...

- You looked after Rehrberg too much...
- I had no choice.

Panfilov: I think that if you
take it seriously...

...that's the only way.
- No other way!

You'd be, "Gosha, what'dya think?
This ok? That ok?"

Tarkovsky: Because I know him,
and he's a swine!

And if you don't pamper him,
he won't lift a finger.

And what happened?

Halfway through, I had to tell him
to get the hell off my set!

Larisa: He behaved
obnoxiously on the set.

Tsymbal: When you started
work on the film,

did you discuss the shoot,
the lighting, for example?

Rehrberg: A bit here and there,
I don't remember now.

You said something interesting
about scale earlier...

A lot was decided
directly on the set...

We had a lot of experience
with that on The Mirror.

Half the film was
invented on the set.

The script kept changing.

Back to The Mirror.

He invited me to work on a film
titled "A Very White Day."

We worked for half a year,
just talking about it.

He was nervous, kept
scratching himself.

I was scratching myself
too by the end of it.

Then the film was shelved and I
went on to a different film.

Tarkovsky wouldn't talk to me
after that for some time,

because I refused
to go back to him.

But I think Rehrberg
was a great choice:

I couldn't do what he did.

I like directors who work
with improvisation,

because a director must
always be "new" -

I like learning from him.

Andrei had a great
working style -

if you suggest something to
him, he snatched it up.

Rehrberg basically saved
Tarkovsky on that film,

because Yusov
wouldn't do it...

Andrei and I did a few
films together and

we were perhaps
weary of each other.

Yusov was not happy about this
kind of confessional style.

Mother had to answer
a whole lot of questions

and her interview had to be
filmed in secret.

We had a script that went
through a lot of changes,

because it did not please anyone,
for various reasons.

And so we started work on the
weakest, most obscure section:

the dreams and
visions of the boy...

The studio curator Skubina would
run after him on the set

begging for some bits of script
to submit to the studio heads.

There was virtually no script.
That's how they worked.

Well we made up a bunch
as we went along.

For example: nature is always
preventing the boy

from returning to the house:

either the wind, or the rain,
or what have you.

Then we wrote the text: "I keep dreaming
of my childhood home..."

"where I can never return..."
The text came later.

"The same dream comes with
astonishing regularity.

It seems to command me
to go back to that place,

so painfully familiar, where my
grandfather's house stood,

where I was born
over forty years ago.

Right on the kitchen table, covered
with a crisp white cloth.

Every time I mean to enter,
something keeps me back.

I keep seeing that dream.
I am used to it."

That was already inside us -

Andrei was telling the story of
his childhood, and I - of mine.

The scriptwriter wrote about his.
Everything mixed together.

This was evident in the final product:
it was an improvised film.

And that is where its special
charm comes from.

We made up half the film and
improvised the other half.

The trouble was the film had
17 different final cuts...

Of course you could do that
in the Soviet Union.

They understood each
other very well.

It was just the
right combination.

Andrei needed that kind of
understanding from his DP.

You can invent a set, invent a situation,
invent a mise-en-scene,

imagine the details of the set,
plan the lighting,

work out the blocking,

and finally put it
all into practice.

Basically this was true of nearly
every scene inside the house:

Tarkovsky's childhood home.

This was all worked out
in the art director's studio,

the three of us sat down
and sketched it out,

planned camera angles,

even such details as
the mirror on the wall,

which reflects children
standing in the doorway,

through which we see
the fire outside.

But this kind of advanced planning
was very rare for this film.

We could talk about
the counterpoint of color:

the green vs. the red
of the fire.

We could talk about
fire and water -

that combination has always
interested artists.

If you want to know about
my favorite shot: this is it.

For me it sets the tone
of the aesthetic of the film

and this is just how
I imagine this woman:

she was so lofty and so lovely -
that's how she was.

And you can see the changes
in the composition here:

at first she is low and
cast down, then...

the view seems
to be irrational...

I can't really say why
it was done this way.

It seems to be some kind of an
inner, psychological turn.

Were you operating the camera,
or did you have an assistant?

That's good.

The best things I did
came to me intuitively,

in a dream, unconsciously...

A multilayered image cannot come
from a rational consciousness.

Andrei loved his childhood.
I less so, perhaps.

But that communion with nature
I learned in childhood

had its influence on my interaction
with people and nature.

The child is a significant
part of our lives.

A time when you are perfectly
open, still untainted...

Unless of course you have
some bad genes.

The strange thing is
that that childhood

stays with you for
the rest of your life.

You see, The Mirror may be
my best film because...

Because it was Andrei's top work,
as far as I'm concerned.

He gestated it. It
wasn't written...

It came out of him. And
all autobiographical films

are typically the
director's best films.

That's when their very
nature comes out.

It is always the truth,
which is crucial.

Konchalovsky never had
that autobiographical film -

perhaps it's still to come.

It think it will come.

The Stalker Chronicle.
Part II

Let's talk about the making
of that establishing shot:

The main thing was the
script and the text.

We shot a scene in the room
with these three people

and with that text.

I think we used a
medium length lens.

When we developed it
there was nothing there.

Andrei said: How come Bergman
can do wide and we can't?

Let's use the widest lens we have
(I never like doing that) -

and hope it comes out.

We shot it again with the wide
lens, same interior.

Developed it -
nothing there.

He says: I got it. We have
to get a "longer" lens,

and use a different
camera angle.

So the grips had to put a hole
in a concrete wall

- That was me!
- You too?

We put the camera outside

and shoot the same
thing all over again.

Develop it - nothing there.

It wasn't a matter of...

And what about busting up
the road to the station...

Basically blood was spilled,
and nothing gained by it.

In the end he built a studio
set for that scene.

In the end... that's
another story.

This was the beginning
of the end for Rehrberg:

whatever he shot,
however he shot it -

we reshot scenes many times
with different lenses -

many different angles -

certain things were beginning
to drive us crazy.

Even the grips were
becoming frustrated,

and they usually don't care
as long as they're working.

They were ready to work
24 hours a day

as long as there is
a final product.

Imagine what the DP
was going through.

The relationship was
becoming strained:

There were always jokes
and jibes on set,

but here the situation
was very tense.

I remember when Rehrberg
finally said to Andrei:

Andrei, let's take it easy.

Two geniuses on the same set
can be too much.

There was a deathly silence.

Tarkovsky pretended
not to hear that remark.

From the book by Konchalovsky:
Low Truths.

I remember the summer of '63.

We were at the summer house.
There was an argument.

Andrei was standing
by the window.

It was raining. Andrei turned
around and asked:

You think YOU're
the genius?

I did not answer.

There was a silence. We heard
the sound of rain hitting leaves.

I looked at him and knew exactly
what he was thinking:

he thought he was the
genius, not I.

As a major artist,
he was acutely aware

of being underestimated,
slighted.

It was a real tragedy for him.

He was constantly railing
against Cannes,

and yet he dreamed of getting
the Grand Prix.

Why did he need it?

Alas, he was all too human,
as far as I saw it.

First they replaced the art director,
then the second AC.

- They replaced Boym?
- Not because he did something wrong.

He had to go to Tashkent
to do sets for a ballet.

From the Diaries of Tarkovsky,
translated from the French:

May 28, 1977. Shooting difficult,
nearly collapsed.

Boyd is drinking. If I don't
get rid of him now

I'll never work
with him again.

The same goes
for Rehrberg.

They are not serious.
They have no ambition.

They are mediocre, infantile
creatures. Bastards. Halfwits.

Well, he may have thought so,
but the bottom line is:

no matter how much
Rehrberg or I drank -

he is the one in charge.

Then comes that terrible moment
when you mount the "scaffold"

and you must
raise your arms.

And the first moments - it either
goes right, or it doesn't.

There are 106 people
in the orchestra.

Each did or did not sleep well
or eat well that day.

He may have had
a fight that day.

And that creates such
pressure, such resistance -

it happens without any intention
from the players.

The first 10-15 min goes to creating
some kind of diffusion

between my state
and their state.

Two states fusing and becoming
a creative process.

The rest is easy.

The music takes over:
piano, forte...

You don't think about it,
because it's going on already.

What can I say? My
conscience is clean.

If we drank, we
drank all together.

But we sure did drink.

Sure there were moments
when Rehrberg outdrank him,

and he outdrank
Rehrberg too plenty.

I don't believe it happened,
and Andrei said then:

The only thing we have
so far is Boym's set.

That set was built
at Mosfilm.

I think he was happy with
the first shots in the studio.

The set that was built later was
very similar to Boym's set.

They were identical.

This is confirmed when we look
at the shots from Stalker

and compare them to cuttings
from the original version.

We spent several years looking
for this evidence,

and found them by chance in the
archive of Rehrberg's assistant,

who worked with him at the
beginning of the film.

From the recollections of Feigina,
Tarkovsky editor.

I have the materials from
the original Stalker,

shot by the marvelous
DP Rehrberg.

It is brilliant in both direction
and cinematography.

That film is a tragic story

the entire footage turned out
to be unusable.

These lines were written in 1988,

for a collections of memoirs
dedicated to Tarkovsky,

edited by his sister, Marina.

Two years later Feigina
was killed in a fire

and the materials
burned with her.

The deal with the film stock
was that it was crap.

Plus, the stuido lab was missing
a processing step.

It wasn't just our
film that got ruined:

there was no black
on two other films.

Sure, there were "thin
spots," I admit it.

I shouldn't have held them
in as long as I did.

Finally the results
were unsatisfactory,

I did not thinks so then,
I don't think so now.

You could print it
in the west - maybe.

But you couldn't
print it here.

When we had these dismal
failures I asked Rehrberg,

Why didn't you test the film stock
that you brought with you?

The problem was
the film stock?

That was part of it.

There is such a thing as
technical inspection.

The main culprit, that... chief engineer
Konoplev, who died...

He says, "What's this?
I don't test film stock!"

"Let them worry about it.
The studio can do tests!"

I say, You're the DP, working
for a Soviet studio.

You think they're gonna do
anything for you?

"That's not my problem.
It was the lab's fault."

- So did you do tests?
- I never do tests!

So you think that's not your job?
Then what's your job?

That's it! He was drunk then.
That's it! he says.

He came with
some whore too...

Andrei, I'm not working
with any of you again.

I'm going abroad!

Just before that you shot a film
for Soloviev on the same stock.

Right. White Night Melodies.

Everyone was very happy.

They processed it in Japan.

They tested the film
prior to shooting -

but that was the
lab's job, right?

Right, we got back a print
on Kodak stock,

it was so good the head technician
at the lab showed it to everyone.

- That's why you chose Kodak.
- That's why.

But what third party sold us
the stock - nobody knows.

I don't know what
the problem was.

Misfortunes always
come in droves:

it wasn't just the stock;

they did not have a proper
setup at the lab.

When they started
beating me up over it

Nakhabtsev came by
with a box of film stock

and showed on the label
the extra processing step.

Kniazhinsky and Nakhabtsev
had the same problems.

I happened to be in the third
auditorium, by accident.

There were lots of people, studio
heads with Sizov in command.

They were viewing
rushes from Stalker.

It was incredibly beautiful.

I remember one shot that
made it to the final cut:

A shot of a mossy bog
overlooking a void.

A fantastic scale trick.
Incredibly beautiful.

Everyone's quiet,
just watching.

Waiting for the committee
to say something.

I don't remember if
Rehrberg was there.

Nakhabtsev was there.
And he defended Rehrberg

as the head of the
cinematography department.

Or at least he defended
the cinematographer's craft.

Suddenly Sizov says:
Andrei, it's out of focus.

You'll have to reshoot.

He said it out loud.

Rehrberg was blamed for the
complete failure of the shoot.

They started blaming
him for everything.

800,000 rubles was a
big deal back then.

They had spent about 500,000
of the budget by then.

They had to excuse
themselves somehow

and they decided to blame
it all on Rehrberg.

But they couldn't do it.

He was perfectly innocent,
as far as technical things go.

Me and Adnrei had patched
things up by then -

he was a little mad at me
for backing out of The Mirror.

I say: what's the matter?

He says, Rehrberg did a bad job.
Most of it is unusable.

I say, impossible.

Let me show you
the footage, he says.

I can't watch 6,000
feet of footage -

I just don't believe it's true.

I understand the cinematography
of Stalker,

and I understand what's
experimental there.

I know that he had pushed
his film stock to the limit.

Can we make a deal - play it
like that for all eternity.

One more time please.

Rehrberg spoke his mind,
maybe a little too bluntly,

in front of the writers.

He said something about the script,
about some scene.

And it may have been
the last straw.

And this is how Andrei
reacted to it.

That the was probably
the pretext.

I learned one thing from
this whole Stalker disaster:

Andrei needs a lot of time
to gestate something.

He wasn't allowed to
work for a long time,

and when he was finally
allowed to make a film

he didn't have enough time to get
his head around the script.

And Rehrberg, with his typical frankness,
told him straight out.

That was not a nice
thing to swallow.

That was the beginning
of the tensions.

Then there was all
this bad stock,

and it was the end.

He just said it to him
in his usual manner:

told him just what he
thought about it all.

Not right away, it
was all building up.

But before the final parting
he even managed

to say something
to the writers,

when they came up to rework
some part of the script.

It was directed at Strugatsky
more than at Andrei...

Basically I told Andrei that
he should stop shooting,

rewrite the script,
and check into a hospital,

both him and me.

When was this?

That was in Tallin.

Andrei was afraid that they
won't let him work again.

He had to keep going.

When the row became
pretty intense

one of the Strugatskys
came down to my room

and told me to stay
out of the script.

In response I told him
what I thought of the dialogs.

I said: I can't stay out.

Next day we are shooting
in a hotel in Tallin,

he calls me: "Andrei,
everything will be fine!"

I said, do you remember
what I told you last night?

He doesn't answer.
Maybe he did not remember.

I said, I told you I never
want to see you again!

You can go back to Moscow,
or you can keep boozing here,

we'll never see
each other again.

I'll never shake
your hand again!

And I've never said
hello to him since.

because he betrayed me!

Always with his girls...
so shameless...

Oh, he knew how to party!
That genius!

Who's this Tarkovsky?
Never heard of him!

Listen, I didn't
want to do it...

But I had to throw him out,
halfway through the shooting.

Finally Andrei reworked the script
the way Rehrberg wanted it,

but he never admitted it.

What is typical of Rehrberg's
work as cinematographer

is what I consider to the be the highest
understanding of film art today.

He does not merely
put together a scene,

he puts together the context
of several scenes.

Only when taken together can they
attain this highest value

and determine the
composition of the whole,

the value of the entire
production, the whole film.

The first step is to understand
what the artist had in mind.

And for me any work of art
that is intended for interpretation

is first of all a
human document.

And my relationship to it
when I perform it.

The Stalker Chronicle.
Part III

Andrei was able to
shoot the film again

using the momentum
of the initial filming.

He shot it seemingly under
optimal conditions.

And when he made it

he realized that it was not
the film he should have made.

But how could you
excuse yourself:

you can't just come back
to the studio and say:

I was a little rash...
I could do better...

And so he had to use these strange,
perhaps cruel means -

I mean he had to
sacrifice Rehrberg.

Tarkovsky never showed
any footage to his crew.

Once I was able to sneak
into the projection booth,

where they were
watching the rushes

and I saw some of the material,
and it astonished me.

The image was
pretty monochromatic

and reminiscent of what we saw
in the final version of Stalker.

But the skies were the color
of lemon, acidic.

The first Stalker was largely
based on special effects,

on strange and mysterious events,
taking place in the outside world.

From the Diaries of Tarkovsky,
published in Paris.

Aug 26, 1977 Everyone will
be new: the DP, the designer.

I want to try to
get Abdusalamov.

And the script.

The Strugatskys are trying
to rewrite the script

for the new Stalker who must
not be a junkie poacher.

He must be a believer,
a devotee of the Zone.

We must start
everything from zero.

Do we have the
strength for it?

I must send an article about
MosFilm to the Pravda -

about the primacy of matter

and the secondary nature
of our consciousness.

Must tell the studio chief Sizov
about this concept.

As far as I know
Sizov loved Tarkovsky

and permitted him many things
he would not permit others.

I was on set when
they launched Stalker.

The set was
a burnt out hut.

Rehrberg and Tarkovsky came
and said: this is garbage.

And the hut was really burnt -
it took a lot of work.

The entire studio staff
came in to see this set,

but Tarkovsky just said:
we can't use it.

We have to rebuild it.

And he was alowed
to rebuild it from scratch.

It was a whole new set.

From the Diaries of Tarkovsky,
published in Paris.

Aug 26, 1977 I arranged
with Kalashnikov:

he is a professional that can do
a great deal more than Rehrberg.

When he takes on a problem
he has to find a solution,

and when he has
no problems to solve

he feels himself
creatively impotent.

He yearns for problems
that he can solve.

And he shall have them.

When I was removed from the film
and replaced by Kalashnikov,

who was brought in many
times to "save" films,

I presented him with
a pen and said:

Take this pen.
What for? he says.

I say: you'll have to
write a script.

He says: I don't
write scripts.

And he went off.
Shot 1,500 meters.

And when he realized that he isn't
going to get paid he ran off.

Because it did not interest him,
and there was no money.

- So then this other genius showed up...
- Another genius...

Our friend Kalashnikov, who is just
unbearable. He and his wife.

- Just unbearable.
- I didn't get it. He got scared...

Scared he couldn't
get the job done.

And he refused to film.

They couldn't work it out
with Kalashnikov.

I don't know why.
They were different people.

- I thought you liked him...
- What he shot was not bad...

Even better than Rehrberg's.

But it was just NOT BAD.

Because Kalashnikov... he just can't
get above a certain level.

He is a professional,
and no more than that.

It was not enough for me.

I saw some things... And he
didn't like my working style.

From the memoirs of the
art director Abdusalamov.

Kalashnikov and I took
off. Poor man.

He couldn't calm down
the whole trip back.

What was I thinking?
Trying to work with a genius...

I came to Tallin - it was
script version #9 by then.

He acted in my film Triptich
in '70 and designed the set.

Andrei heard that he was
a brilliant artist,

and decided to invite him.

I left Tarkovsky to avoid
a conversation about his wife.

Andrei went back to Moscow,
I stayed behind -

his wife started gathering
some signatures...

as a kind of protest.

I said, don't do that,
it's not Andrei's style.

If you want, I'll rewrite it.

If Andrei says so,
I'll sign it...

- Sign what?

That the crew has
such and such complaints...

She was the one
running the show.

So I left.

When he came back and found me gone
she told him all kinds of stories.

God know it wasn't true.

The set was full of intrigue.

Very peculiar personal relations
evolved around the "Empress,"

as she was known
on the set.

A very peculiar
system of worship.

Tarkovsky never
got wind of it,

kind of like rulers never get accurate
reports of their subjects.

I am innocent before Andrei
and I never offended her.

But you just couldn't
work in that setting.

You can say I anticipated the events.
I left just like Rehrberg.

Some story. But... I think
we did all we could -

me, Rehrberg, Boym, and Voronkov,
the old colorist at Mosfilm,

who was a teacher
to all of us.

It is collective work.
Stalker is a group work.

That Andrei put his name there
instead of mine - so be it.

We all did our
jobs earnestly.

And I think Rehrberg
also did his job well.

It's all Larisa's doing.
That spinner of intrigue.

Their relationship, I would
say, is pretty demonic.

First of all, she poised herself
as a kind of savior of Andrei:

a modest Russian woman, taking
on the weight of the world,

asking for nothing in return,

a Russian angel, guarding
a brilliant artist.

But as she established
herself more and more

especially after
she gave birth,

she kept claiming more
and more for herself.

To the point where she claimed
to be that pure source

from which Tarkovsky drinks
his inspiration and energy.

She ruined all his relationships
with all former friends,

all former associates,

You told me that after the film
was suspended Larisa called

and invited you to spend
the New Year's with them.

Right. I imagined they wanted
to patch things up.

The artists turned out to be
a lot more corporate:

they just refused to work.

Ramazin, Begubsky...
Abusallamov did a little work.

But he wasn't really
on the level...

And he would not work
with anyone else.

I knew Larisa.

I remember her back when
she was just his assistant.

She would place a flower
on his desk every day.

This was all
during my time,

at the height of
our friendship -

when he got married,
and disappeared -

he hid it from us.

I don't think he was the kind
of person who had friends -

meaning friends with whom you
discuss personal questions.

I think that he hid all his
personal issues very deeply.

His relationship with Larisa,
the reasoning behind it.

Why it had to be her.

Why he was embarrassed
by her, afraid of her.

Why he couldn't leave her.

Why she was a witch,
why she was an angel -

this is all in his films.

But none of us would even think
of saying anything to him

about Larisa or any
other thing like that -

maybe somebody like
his mother could.

I'm sure she did say
something at the beginning.

Maybe Marina or his father
talked to him about it.

But that was all
behind closed doors,

and I don't know what
his responses were.

I think probably
it hurt him...

By that time Andrei had
already walked

a long and difficult
road in cinema -

as everyone knows.

His personality had changed
a great deal in those years.

I can't even compare
the young Andrei -

working on
Ivan's Childhood -

and the Andrei
who made Stalker.

These are two
different people.

The process of
crafting an image

is informed by the
artist's worldview.

The worldview is shaped
by the artist's time,

country of residence,
culture...

his daily interactions,

his unique intellectual and
physical attributes.

This painting was done during
the filming of Stalker,

the artist is
Dmitri Shushkalov.

Andrei valued him
highly as a painter.

Andrei liked it
very much.

Dima tried to recreate
his inner world in painting.

Here we have
Tarkovsky himself -

Larisa, of course -

her daughter,
their son Andrei -

In the background
you have the Stalker

and even farther back
you can make out

the various frequent
visitors to their house.

A certain Araik,
and Zhenia,

the manager of an
antique furniture shop.

Andrei was uncompromising
in terms of aesthetics.

Otherwise he was a soft,
spineless person.

He could be talked
into anything.

Especially if Larisa
was the one talking.

She understood that
in him right away.

It could never
happen to Andron -

that his wife would be
bossing him around -

deciding who gets to be his
friend and who doesn't.

On the last film
I first understood

what it means to take
pleasure in making films.

- I never imagined...

... that you could work
like that with a DP.

It's like a woman you love
and you live with her.

- After all the films, after Yusov...
- Right, right!

It's like as if my
wife ran away,

and I was suffering,
going out of my mind -

then by chance I
met anther woman -

..no, no - and then we
would get married -

and suddenly -
I saw the light!

My god! why in the world did I
ever waste my time on her?

What a strange life it is...

Don't be afraid of anything.
Change everything!

It was all coming from Larisa,
even though I...

I couldn't say it
was all her fault -

I mean she's
really a nobody.

Tarkovsky made the
decisions - it's his fault.

So Andrei was a harsh
man, a cruel man?

I suppose it comes
with the territory.

I mean the territory
in this country.

In Russia, it's always...
where there's a dictatorship -

someone has to
be a dictator.

The director had the State
Committee over his head

and he became the
dictator of his crew.

I thought to change them -
and they changed me!

In their image,
after their likeness.

Future used to be simply
the continuation of the past.

All changes were somewhere
far beyond the horizon.

Now the future has fused
with the present.

Are they ready for it?

They want to know nothing.
They only know to eat.

Let's get back to Stalker.

Right. Andrei stopped
filming for the winter,

rewrote the script,

and in the spring
started all over again.

And he shot it all fresh.

This was only possible
in the USSR,

and it was only
possible for Andrei.

Shoot 1,500 meters
three times over -

and they're basically
the same.

Minor changes -
I don't remember.

- The hero was different
- Right, the hero's different.

As far as the image goes it was
more or less the same.

For Tarkovsky man is part
of the environment.

Right. Sometimes he gets
blamed for it. Unjustly.

Man is part of nature...

And not always the most
important part - in the frame...

No - I wouldn't go there...

all that stuff - light more
important that actors...

- Kniazhinsky's cynicism.
- It's cynical and it's wrong.

It's all in close-ups there.
I always loved filming faces...

...from the lifetime of ants,
we used to call it...

Nonsense.

But my work with
Kniazhinsky -

those were the best
days of my life.

In terms of cinematography,
personal relations...

What a delicate,
intelligent man...

So loyal, so trusting,
an ideal DP.

I doubt Kniazhinsky added
anything to the film.

Kniazhinsky could
never equal Rehrberg.

I think Rehrberg
became a scapegoat,

and was replaced
with Kniazhinsky -

who was a fairly
skilled professional,

but in terms of \tenderness -

which is the key to this
film, its highest pitch -

in terms of subtlety,
refinement

he was far inferior
to Rehrberg.

- That one, that shit!
- Who?

Rehrberg - who'll never
make a film again -

he doesn't know how anymore,
he ate himself up.

- Who is he working with now?
- He was with Talankin...

Yes that awful
"Shooting Stars" -

In 1984 the jury at the
Venice Film Festival

was so impressed
with "Shooting Stars" -

an adaptation of
an Astafiev novella,

so "dreadfully" photographed
by Rehrberg -

that it established a new prize:
a golden lion for cinematography.

But as a DP Rehrberg
was not sent to Venice

and he never
received his prize.

We used photographs that
we found in a war museum -

that's how it was
in real life:

corpses, people getting scrubbed,
that bottle there...

At that time war films mostly
used the old "newsreel" look -

we decided to do it differently,
to make a color film,

and at the same time stay
true to the spirit -

kind of harsh colors too.

It seemed to me pretty
modern back then.

Some of the sequences
are very strong,

especially the hospital scene,

that blood transfusion -
right after the dance.

A great contrast.

I worried that they will want
to change the text -

add their various
safety devices -

but it was a good film.

Of all the films that were
made from my stories

this is the best one.

He had his share
of insults,

but you can't really
insult this man.

He had real dignity -

insulting him was like
insulting yourself.

They wanted to
tear us apart.

Because any partnerships or individuals
that rise above the norm...

Basically the film got done - but
there was a pile of corpses

and it was shot three times.

It's too bad they managed
to break us up,

because I would have had
a different life.

I would have probably gone
abroad with him,

but I would have
come back.

I can't live anywhere THERE.
I have to live HERE.

Some of the material
shot by Rehrberg

did make it into the
final cut of Stalker.

If you remember that storm that
sweep across the foam -

that was shot by Rehrberg.

There were no purifiers, and god knows
what we were breathing -

the stench was unbearable.

It may be that all those
who have since died

may have gotten their various
illnesses right here.

Both Tarkovsky and his wife
died from lung cancer.

Solonitsyn died from
lung cancer.

And many who worked
on the film are gone.

HAPPINESS FOR ALL,
FREE OF CHARGE

AND LET NO ONE
DEPART CHEATED!

Tarkovsky's dream
came true:

he left the SU and
was hailed a genius.

But he paid a high price.

Judging by the way Andrei
dealt with his other DPs -

I saw the film about the
making of Sacrifice -

it is clear that he trusted
Rehrberg most of all.

It wasn't the same
with Kniazhinsky.

I was annoyed that
for the first fourteen days

Tarkovsky was looking
through the camera.

I believe you had something
to say about that?

I imagine that for
the first week or so

Andrei was just checking
to make sure.

It was probably hard for him
without the language.

He wouldn't stay
with the camera

unless he was working with
a bad DP, and that was rare.

Only on Stalker he did
everything by himself.

He must have thought
himself a better DP.

During the filming he spoke
a great deal about you.

He said that you and
I are very similar

and I took it as
a compliment.

Tarkovky's diaries were
published by Larisa.

When Tarkovsky
was still alive

Larisa would sometimes
show me these diaries.

This was in Rome.

She'd say "Look at what he's
writing, the bastard!"

I had always wanted to build
a home, a family -

but how can I do it
with a woman like Larisa!

"Can you believe that
son of a bitch!"

Seriously, that's how it was,
I'm telling the truth.

Larisa was enraged
by what he wrote -

whether he meant
it or not.

I hear that the published diaries
are heavily edited by her.

If you could, what would you
say to Rehrberg today?

I'm afraid that
I couldn't...

The fact that he took
part in some events

organized in memory of Tarkovsky -
that means a lot to me.

Even through he was still very
hurt by what happened.

It is very dear to me. But - I doubt
I could say anything to him.

I regret that I did not
know him better.

Now I understand that an entire
world has vanished with him,

a deep and meaningful world,
which I never knew.

Shostakovich wrote, I was
at first quite frightened

by Mravinsky's methods.
I thought he was nitpicking -

he would interrogate
me about every note,

demanding I resolve
all his difficulties.

But by the fifth
day I understood

that this was
the correct method.

And I took my own
work more seriously

when I saw how seriously
Mravinsky took his.

Andrei Konchalovsky studied
at the Conservatory

but he did not
become a musician.

Tarkovsky dreamed of
becoming a conductor.

But it was Rehrberg who got
Mravinsky's baton as a present.

EPILOGUE

Tarkovsky's last film
was shot in Sweden.

The Royal Theater in Stockholm put on
a play by Erland Josephson -

the actor who played
in his last film -

about the loneliness of a director,
who had defected from the SU.

Tarkovsky left behind friends
and colleagues,

who loved him and helped him
realize his boldest visions.

In the early '80s
Ingmar Bergman wrote:

I love and admire Tarkovsky.
I think he is one of the greats.

But I think Tarkovsky is beginning
to imitate himself.

The scene of the death of
the hero in The Mirror

had a strange significance.

He played that part himself, though
you couldn't see much of him.

He shot it on the
eve of his birthday.

Everyone was a little moved
and uneasy about it,

even if everyone
laughed it off.

When he wanted to see how
he would look in that bed,

he would trade
places with Rehrberg,

and Rehrberg
would lie down

and both tried out that death bed
on the eve of his birthday.

In the end, all I wanted
was to be happy.

And what will happen
to your mother -

if you don't get up
off this bed?

Nothing... All will be well.

All will be...

I think that the '90s were
tragic for Rehrberg,

and perhaps they
sped up his demise.

There was no cinema.

The kind of cinema
that he could do.

And there was
no money for it.

Astafiev is not
getting anything,

and we've known each other
since "Shooting Stars."

No one will give money -

Novels are hard these day...

Well, I have a novella,
for god's sake...

Yes, he would be
the one to do it.

Because there is so
much subtext there -

very little action...

He knows how to do that.

"Do you have a director?"

I think we can find somebody
if we look hard enough.

Outside that clique.

Because nothing good
comes from there.

The tragedy was that he had amassed
an incredible amount of experience -

and he had to
make commercials,

and I think he raised
the bar there -

because today you can't stand
looking at badly shot ads.

Rehrberg brought dignity
to the commercial.

I was talking to some of my former
colleagues in the ad world,

and I wondered, why don't
they use Rehrberg?

They said, he takes too long.

I couldn't understand it.
We worked very quickly.

And we never
had any fights.

No, because when he told us
it's shit, we agreed.

Then I understood that
he works slowly

when the director doesn't
know what he's doing.

He couldn't just make trash,

even when the director
and the client

were perfectly willing
to make trash.

So of course he got
on their nerves.

I feel bad that he will never
make anything like The Mirror,

or even something like the ads
we made together.

That's not so important,
I guess,

what is important is that one of
my closest friends is gone.

I can't call him up anymore and say,
I'm coming over for breakfast.

Without asking permission.

I think it is a
very human loss.

For me, for a few others.

It's a great deal more than
all his contribution to art.

He was a very strange,
unique man.

I don't know anybody
else like him.

He was a man born in the wrong
time, in the wrong country.

A man with a complicated
and contradictory life,

which I think very few have
really understood.

In my studies of the
history of philosophy

I have come to understand

that you cannot get rid
of the concept of fate.

All eras had their own
understanding of fate, sure.

Antiquity had its fate, the middle
ages had its own fate.

There are many
shades of meaning.

But if we had to
choose one principle,

I would say freedom
is very important.

But fate is also important.

It plays an important role.

Freedom and Fate.

No, no, there is
no censorship now.

There is freedom of choice,
but there is no choice.

"...fantastic beams that span

the entire width
of the Manege.

One of the listeners said:
it could be rebuilt,

but you couldn't repaint
the Mona Lisa.

The original is dead.

We have to understand:
this is the original!

If Mona Lisa burns down,
you couldn't repaint it.

We have to understand:
the original is on fire!"

I had a great emotional
shock yesterday,

because even these
walls are now gone.

A new age is dawning,

and we have to say goodbye
to our illusions.

Will you come back
when this is rebuilt?

I won't come, and I won't
give them a single photo.

I don't want this museum.

Andrey's films -
that's his museum.

What happened here
is my personal tragedy.

Moscow will take
little notice.

Everything will be fine.
A business will be here.

They manufacture
faucets or toilets.

Everything is
nice and smooth.

Clean, as they say.
Renovation, clean.

This is a funeral, as far
as I am concerned.

The process of
crafting an image

is informed by the
artist's worldview.

The worldview is shaped
by the artist's time,

country of residence,
culture...

his daily interactions,

his unique intellectual and
physical attributes.

Written and directed

by Igor Maiboroda