For most of his works in cinema Viktor Andrienko drew inspiration from classical films. \u201cThere\u2019s a gazillion of films that have inspired me. Every single movie I\u2019ve mentioned is connected in my mind with a certain event in my life. Let\u2019s say I mention a certain film and it automatically brings memories of another one. So all of these things are interconnected\u201d, Viktor Andrienko said.<\/p>\n
In my fifth or sixth grade I went to Yalta. Fridman was filming his Treasure Island there at the time. I remember watching \u201cthe pirates\u201d driving a UAZ vehicle (also known as the \u201cBobik\u201d) to the set. I recall the actors and stuntmen in front of a tavern setting\u2026 I was mesmerized by all of it.<\/p>\n
Shortly afterwards I came across The Adventures of Ben Gunn (a companion novel to Stevenson’s Treasure Island). It was not available as a book. Instead it was published in serial format in Vokrug Sveta (literally: \u201cAround the World\u201d) magazine. So I cut out all the chapters, bound them together and made my own book. I even designed my own cover for it. Years later, when we were filming our own version of Treasure Island (a film directed by David Cherkasky and released in 1988), I gave this handmade book as a present to David. Later Cherkasky said he had incorporated many portions of the text and storylines into our film, which would eventually become very popular with the audience.<\/p>\n
While working on his new project Mad Macaroni, Cherkasky showed us Robert Zemeckis\u2019 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and then its making-of featurette. So, in the film we had been working on at the time, we incorporated the same baldly experimental technique of combining live action and animation.<\/p>\n
Later I found out that Zemeckis had worked six years at The Walt Disney Studios as animator. That\u2019s how he came up with the idea for this film. In general, no matter what Zemeckis is up to, he always does it in the best possible way.<\/p>\n
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I couldn\u2019t possibly have missed this film in my teens since I was the best judoka in town and placed first among juniors. Later I learnt that it was Akira Kurosawa who wrote the screenplay and produced the film. Kurosawa also directed films Seven Samurai and Rashomon, which were my favorite ones in those years. Kurosawa himself said that he was a descendant of a samurai family. So making this kind of films was his way of apologizing to his ancestors for not becoming a samurai. Also, those films introduced me to Toshiro Mifune, who is one of my favorite actors.<\/p>\n
Over time I saw Dodes’ka-den \u2013 Kurosawa\u2019s first color film. Sadly, it was released here in black-and-white. Besides, the Soviet audience only saw a shortened version of it, which is a pity really, since Kurosawa worked really hard on the color palette and gave each character his own unique flavor.<\/p>\n
A similar fate befell Bumbarash directed by Abram Naroditsky and Nikolai Rasheyev and released in 1972. Only years later, while working on a documentary program about Roman Adamovich (who was the art director of the movie) did I discover that Bumbarash was a color film. Adamovich told me, that each scene had its own color palette depending on the mood it was to convey. And sometimes there were mishaps. For instance, the scene where Bumbarash meets with the commissar was to be filmed with green grass in the background, but at the time of shooting it \u2013 autumn already came. That\u2019s why they painted the grass green. And after the scene was shot, some cows went out into the field. I can\u2019t imagine how shocked the milkmaids must have been, when the cows returned with their udders tainted with green paint.<\/p>\n