Vladimir Vysotsky and Marina Vladi
Vladimir Vysotsky dedicated more than one poem to Marina Vladi. Their relationship was filled with passion, inspiration and crazy adoration. How did this love story begin?
In 1959, the film “The Witch” was released, in which Marina Vladi played the main role. The movie was a resounding success. Later, Vysotsky will say that when he saw Vladi on the screen, he was immediately captivated by her beauty and charm.
Marina first saw Vysotsky at a rehearsal of the play “Pugachev”. Vladi visited Moscow to participate in a film festival and her friend invited the actress to the Taganka Theater. Marina was amazed by Vysotsky's performance and after the rehearsal accepted the invitation to dinner. But, nevertheless, the spark of mutual attraction did not force Vladi to stay in Russia; she returned to Paris, to her mother and children.
After a while, Marina Vladi agrees to take part in Sergei Yutkevich’s film “The Plot for a Short Story” and temporarily moves to Russia with her family. For Vysotsky and Vladi, this period was full of creativity. Vladimir's popularity continues to grow steadily, and Marina is considered a sought-after actress. They spend a lot of time together, the poet reads poetry to his muse, and she becomes his first listener and critic.
By the time Vysotsky and Vladi went to the registry office, they were both 30. Each had two marriages and children behind them. Immediately after registration, the couple went on a honeymoon to Odessa. Vladimir gave Marina a gift - a cruise on the Georgian ship on the Black Sea. They later recalled that this trip became one of the most exciting events in their lives.
Vysotsky really wanted to travel with Marina, to see the world in all its diversity, but six years after the wedding he could not get permission to leave the country. Vladimir was forced to stay in Moscow, while Vladi was in France. Vysotsky had a hard time separating from his wife and suppressed his despair with alcohol and drugs. Later, the poet was nevertheless given a visa, and together with Marina they visited both Europe and America. However, the effect of Vladimir’s addictions became more and more apparent. Vladi tried to somehow influence the situation, but, as she would later tell, she didn’t know at the time that it was the morphine.
On July 11, 1980, the couple separated again: Vysotsky flew to Moscow, and Vladi was forced to stay in Paris. Their last telephone conversation took place on July 23, 1980. Vysotsky swore that he had given up all bad habits and asked his wife to accept him again. And on July 25, Marina learned that Vladimir was no longer there.
The story of genuine love by Vladimir Vysotsky
Who in the Soviet Union did not know about their love story, unimaginable at that time? Everything about her was incredible: the famous French “witch,” with whom the whole country fell in love after the film of the same name, and the bard, whose songs became popular before his own name. How long during ten years of marriage were they together - six months, a year?..
“Let me see him!”
Their acquaintance began with the play “Pugachev” at the Taganka Theater. It was a rehearsal, but even at it everyone gave a standing ovation - with such strength and even despair Vysotsky played the escaped convict and Pugachev’s ataman Khlopusha.
Seeing the actor after the performance, Marina did not immediately recognize him: “a short, poorly dressed young man” with “unremarkable appearance”, “only his light gray eyes momentarily attract my attention.” However, they spend the entire evening together - first in a noisy company of actors in a restaurant, and then at a friend’s house, where Vysotsky, sitting at Marina’s feet, sings his songs to her.
For her, he turned out to be not only a man who from the very first days began to seek her hand, not just a talented actor and poet. Through him, Marina began to recognize the Russia from which her adored father and mother, a student of the Smolny Institute who fled to Paris after the disaster and the murder of her beloved classy lady, had left fifty years earlier. With him, Marina recalled the Russian language, which she had not spoken for 25 years.
But, of course, all this only accompanied the fact that Vysotsky himself irrevocably captured Vladi. Having been married twice and having three children, Marina met such a man for the first time - integral, talented (and at the same time - allowing himself so much, but she did not immediately become acquainted with this trait of his).
We do not know how many people from the USSR and capitalist countries were unable to get married: this was not encouraged in Soviet Russia. At one time there was even a decree “On the prohibition of marriages between citizens of the USSR and foreigners.” In this sense, the words from the play that Marina heard on the first day of their acquaintance are “Let me go to him!” - as if they had accompanied them all their lives: they constantly had to achieve the right to love.
“Today I will be like Marina Vladi”
Vysotsky dedicated many songs to Marina, the first of which was written several years before they met. Marina heard it not from him, but... performed by her own children, who, still knowing little Russian, brought it from their Russian peers: “Today in our integrated brigade...” Only from Vysotsky’s laughing eyes did Marina understand that he was the author of the song .
However, the new poems that he now brought to her court meant much more to her. There was trust in this, and a desire to hear her opinion, and also the need to share what was most dear to his heart. It is no coincidence that Vysotsky almost immediately admitted to her that theater was his craft, the main thing was poetry.
So he comes from Siberia and brings a song about a man repressed under Stalin: “Heat a bathhouse for me, hostess...”. Or reads the first lines from “Wolf Hunt”:
I’m straining with all my strength and all my tendons, But today - again, like yesterday, - They surrounded me, surrounded me...
Through songs, Marina learns about how he really lives and that you can’t just say it in words.
One can imagine how Marina Vladi felt when one day she walked with Vysotsky through the center of Moscow and his songs could be heard from windows open from the heat in different houses. However, not a single poem by Vysotsky has been officially published, he is not talked about on television or radio, songs that have already passed censorship are removed from cinema at the last minute, and concerts are often banned. For Vysotsky, this is not just a ban: “They are doing everything so that I do not exist as an individual,” he bitterly tells Marina.
Vysotsky's popularity sometimes saves his life. Once, when his throat began to bleed, the ambulance doctors did not want to take an uncomfortable patient to the hospital: it was too late, they would be in trouble if he died on the road. Only when Marina stands in the doorway and shouts that it is Vysotsky, they reluctantly carry him out of the apartment on a blanket. He was rescued only sixteen hours later. There were more than one or two such moments when Marina pulled Vysotsky out of almost death. This was often due to his enormous craving for alcohol.
Difficult conquest of a new peak
For six long years since the beginning of their acquaintance, only Marina traveled to Russia. Vysotsky was not allowed to go abroad, fearing that he might stay there, as other artists sometimes did. In fact, neither Marina nor Vladimir intended to leave their countries: “You never thought of staying in France. It is vital for you to preserve your roots, language, belonging to your country, which you love so passionately...” In the end, when the decision to refuse a visa has almost been made, Marina contacts someone who can contact Brezhnev directly - and a foreign The passport is brought to your home personally by an officer. “The fight against the cotton wall,” as Vysotsky called it, was won by them again.
Finally, their long-term dreams of what they would do “there” are coming true. They record Vysotsky in a music studio, attend the Cannes Film Festival, and risk meeting with dissidents. Following Marina, Vysotsky recognizes “all of Paris.” He is especially close to Alyosha Dmitrievich, Baryshnikov and, of course, Shemyakin, with whom they communicated a lot, and sometimes disappeared for several days because of their “love for wild drinking bouts.”
More and more often, Marina takes on the role of a tired mother, trying to help Vysotsky stop drinking. Mikhail Shemyakin tells how one day Marina called him and urgently invited him to come to them. Having arrived, Shemyakin did not notice how the already very drunk Vysotsky mistakenly drank a huge sip of vinegar instead of wine: “And I see something is happening to him: Volodya is all red at first, then white, first red, then white... What is this?! Then Marina comes out of the bathroom: “What? What happened to you?" - she’s like a mother... A few minutes later Marina saw this bottle and understood everything... She was already hysterical... “Take him!” Take his suitcase and don’t let me see you again!”
But the binges pass - and they again travel around France, then around Europe and America. Although Vysotsky does not have official permission to perform, here and there he manages to organize concerts for quite a large number of listeners. One of the performances takes place in Los Angeles. Vysotsky with admiration for the first time in his life sees the famous Paul Newman, Liza Minnelli, Robert de Niro, and they applaud and shout “bravo!” his songs. In his book, Vladi describes how, to Vysotsky’s songs, the facial expressions of Hollywood stars change, the carelessness of their manners disappears - they hug and shake hands with this unusual Russian...
He went abroad seven years before his death and managed to conquer it. Marina was always there.
Saying goodbye
In twelve years, Vladimir Vysotsky and Marina Vladi have had so many things happen that some people don’t even have in their fifties. There was a difficult struggle with his addiction to alcohol and drugs, there were women of whom Marina was incredibly jealous, there were difficult relationships with relatives. They managed to overcome many things, although not everything, with the power of love.
A month and a half before his death, while living in Moscow with another woman, Vysotsky wrote to Marina: “Only thanks to you can I return to life again. I love you and I can’t let you feel bad. Believe me, everything will fall into place later, and we will be happy.”
***
Returning from her husband’s funeral, Marina Vladi could not find peace for many years: she collected all of Vysotsky’s poems and songs, wrote more than one book about him, and even married a man who could listen to her stories about him for hours. Today, at eighty, Marina still considers her meeting with Vysotsky to be the main event in her life.
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Marina Vladi and Vladimir Vysotsky
This love had, perhaps, more trials than happy moments. But this was true love: sacrificial, sung in poetry and songs, overcoming obstacles, until the last breath...
Marina Vladi and Vladimir Vysotsky - a love story
Marina Vladi and Vladimir Vysotsky knew about each other even before their first meeting. He first saw the 17-year-old beauty in the film “The Witch,” and even then he decided to win her at all costs. At first she heard a lot about him, then admired his performance from the auditorium of the Taganka Theater.
By the time Vladimir Vysotsky and Marina Vladi met, each had already failed two marriages and had children growing up. They met in a restaurant after the play “Pugachev”. A couple of phrases, an exchange of long glances, and Vladimir offers to go to his friends to sing only for her. That same evening he confessed his love to her. He discourages his beloved even more when she reasonably notes that she won’t be staying in Moscow for very long, and in Paris (which, by the way, is very far away), she has three sons and a job that requires maximum involvement. He replies: “So what? I myself have a family and children, work and fame, but all this will not stop you from becoming my wife.” And the next day he was already persuading the French actress to agree to the role of Chekhov’s muse offered to her, which involved approximately a year’s stay in Russia. He sincerely rejoiced at this opportunity and out loud made their joint plans. Marina’s remark that she did not experience mutual feelings did not bother Vysotsky at all; he confidently declared that he could please her. Vladi realized that she was still in love in Paris - after she received a touching letter from Vladimir and heard his voice on the phone.
The love of Vysotsky and Marina Vladi - moments of happiness
She felt like a real muse of the poet when, on the deserted bank of the river, Vysotsky for the first time and only to her sang his most poignant songs about repression, the framework into which the authorities were driving the creative intelligentsia, about the excesses of the Soviet regime.
Marina Vladi became Vysotsky's wife in 1970. They signed “quietly” and went on a honeymoon cruise to the south. As they later recalled, it was the happiest time in their lives.
Big tests
The love of Vysotsky and Marina Vladi has undergone many trials. Happiness was hampered by rare meetings (she, a world-famous actress, could not completely abandon her career and move to Moscow, and he was not traveling in a country with an “Iron Curtain”). In order for her husband to be allowed out of the country on vacation, she had to join the French Communist Party, whose general secretary personally asked the Moscow leadership to issue Vysotsky a foreign passport.
Marina saved her husband more than once, taking him in a semi-conscious state from an unfamiliar apartment; sometimes, in order to break him out of his drinking bout, she had to fly from Europe. She found and sometimes forced doctors to treat him for alcoholism and the consequences of the disease. Then morphine was added to the alcohol. It became more and more difficult to fight, but she did not give up.
Contemporaries marveled at her patience and determination in striving to preserve this strange love across borders and different worldviews. Many still wonder how much older Marina Vladi is than Vladimir Vysotsky, but the age difference is a misconception, they were the same age, they were under 30 at the time of their first meeting.
Over the 12 years of their marriage, Marina was Vladimir’s beloved, but not the only woman. When Marina was far away, Vysotsky sought the support of other muses.
Vysotsky and Marina Vladi: A beautiful love story
Vysotsky, seeing Marina Vladi on the screen, said to himself: “She will be mine.”
Photo: May 11, 2020, 12:27
When the French film “The Witch” with Marina Vladi in the title role was released in the USSR, the public was simply shocked. For tens of thousands of ordinary Soviet girls, the heroine of the film instantly became an icon, and the male half of the Soviets dreamed and dreamed that their beloved would at least look a little like the mysterious French actress. However, the most daring thoughts hovered in the head of the then little-known actor of the Taganka Theater Volodya Vysotsky, who, seeing Marina Vladi on the screen, said to himself: “She will be mine,” reports Bigpicture.ru.
Marina and Vladimir met in 1967 at the Moscow International Film Festival. Vladi, the daughter of a Russian emigrant, had already been married twice, starred in a dozen films and was a world-famous winner of the Cannes Film Festival prize.
Vysotsky, on the contrary, did not yet even have all-Union popularity, but his songs were already in fashion in Moscow. He was also married twice and had children.
On that very day, foreign guest Marina Vladi was invited to the Taganka Theater. On stage they played “Pugachev” after Yesenin, the role of Khlopushi was played by Vladimir Vysotsky.
The performance made a huge impression on Marina Vladi. And after the performance they found themselves at the same table in the restaurant.
Vysotsky, without a twinge of conscience, eagerly examined the French diva, then leaned towards her and quietly said: “Finally, I met you. I would like to leave here and sing just for you.”
And now he is already sitting at her feet and singing his best songs with a guitar. Then, as if delirious, he admits that he has been madly in love with her for a long time.
She answers with a sad smile: “Volodya, you are an extraordinary person, but I only have a few days for the trip and I have three children.”
But the aspiring actor is assertive: “I also have a family and children, but all this should not prevent us from becoming husband and wife.”
When Marina came to Moscow again, Vladimir was in Siberia filming the film “Master of the Taiga.” Vladi got a role in S. Yutkevich’s film “The Plot for a Short Story” and therefore stayed in the Union for a while.
Once, one autumn evening, at a party with Volodya’s friends, Marina asked to leave them alone. The guests slowly left, the owner retired to the neighbors, and Marina and Vladimir talked about their love all night.
And soon, on January 13, 1970, the wedding of Vladimir Vysotsky and Marina Vladi took place in a temporarily rented Moscow apartment.
The next day, the lovers set off on a boat to Georgia for their honeymoon. These were their best days.
Then separation followed: he went to Moscow, she went to Paris. Both had gray days and difficulties with children. On top of everything else, Vysotsky was not given a visa to travel to France. The newlyweds had only correspondence and phone calls.
One day Volodya told Marina that Andrei Tarkovsky wanted to film her in his “Mirror”. There was a long-awaited hope that they would be together for some time. But it soon turned out that Marina did not pass the test and her candidacy was rejected.
Vysotsky flew into a rage. He began to suppress his anger and despair in continuous drunkenness.
Only six years after the wedding, Vysotsky was finally given permission to travel abroad. Marina Vladi even had to temporarily become a member of the French Communist Party.
Then they began to make up for lost time: they often traveled around the world and took walks. Marina arranged concerts for Volodya in Paris. Vysotsky drove around Moscow in the only Mercedes in the USSR at that time.
When the Hungarian director Messaros filmed Vladi in the film “There Are Two.” And so that Vysotsky could be with his wife, the director specially came up with a cameo role for him.
This is how the only picture was born where Marina Vladi and Vladimir Vysotsky played together.
At first glance, everything seemed fine, but Vladimir’s soul was not so rosy. Despite his wild popularity among the people, the authorities do not recognize Vysotsky - his poems are not published, records are not released, most of the plays in which he begins to rehearse are forbidden to the theater.
Family life at a distance, when you constantly have to simply beg for visas, does not bring him joy. As before, he suppresses his emotions with alcohol and drugs.
Vysotsky tries to overcome addiction, understand himself and begins to think about the meaning of life and death.
Later, Marina tried to figure out what went wrong in their relationship: “I attribute your cooling to me due to fatigue, which is not uncommon for spouses who have lived together for more than ten years...
...I didn’t know then that it was because of the morphine. And, most importantly, you are obviously desperate to survive. I find out about your constant betrayals. I'm sick with jealousy. It took me a while to understand that all of these were just attempts to cling to life, to prove to yourself that you still exist.
You're trying to tell me this, but I can't hear it. That's it, dead end. You can only shout about the main thing, but I only notice what is on the surface. You cry for your love, I only see betrayal...
...You apparently hoped for my help. After all, we fought together against your drunkenness. But in one night everything was said, and there are no more secrets between us. It’s as if we have returned to the roots of our love again, we have nothing to hide from each other.
You say: “That's it. I pull myself together, because life has not yet been lived.” You are trembling all over, but this trembling is not from the cold. On your gray face, only your eyes remained alive and speaking..."
In 1978, Vysotsky decided to leave the theater. To stop the talented actor, Lyubimov invited him to play Svidrigailov in Crime and Punishment.
The play was released in early 1979, and this was Vysotsky’s last role in the theater. It was symbolic that at the end of the play Volodya disappeared into the hatch, from which a trembling reddish light escaped. Marina was shocked by the ending.
The artist’s first heart attack occurred at a concert in Bukhara on July 25, 1979. Then his life was saved by a direct injection in the heart.
“This lady in black doesn’t need me,” Vysotsky said then. But he didn’t know then that exactly a year later she would return.
A month and a half before his death, Vysotsky wrote to Marina: “My love! I can find a way out. I just want to ask you - leave me hope.
Only thanks to you can I return to life again. I love you and I can’t let you feel bad. Believe me, everything will fall into place later, and we will be happy.”
At the first alarm call, Marina Vladi immediately arrived in Moscow, but each time she became convinced that all her efforts to save Volodya were in vain, as if he was deliberately heading towards his end.
On June 11, 1980, Vladi accompanied Vysotsky to Moscow. On the way to the airport, they exchanged routine phrases: “Take care of yourself... Don’t do anything stupid”... But both already felt that they were impossibly far from each other.
On July 18, Vysotsky played Hamlet for the last time. That evening he did not feel well, and the doctor behind the scenes periodically gave him injections.
On July 29, Volodya was supposed to fly back to Paris, to see Marina. Unfortunately, this was not destined to come true. On the evening of July 23, their last telephone conversation took place.
“And at 4 o’clock in the morning on July 25,” Marina Vladi recalled, “I wake up sweating, turn on the light, and sit down on the bed. A bright red mark on the pillow. A huge crushed mosquito. This spot fascinates me.
The phone rings. I know I'll hear the wrong voice. I know! “Volodya is dead!” That's all. Two short words spoken by an unfamiliar voice.”
Having returned completely broken after the funeral to France, she was deeply depressed for a long time and even tried to commit suicide.
Her salvation was a meeting with oncologist Leon Schwarzenberg, who was sympathetic to her depressed state and endless conversations about Vysotsky.
A few years later, Marina Vladi began writing books and published her famous autobiographical novel, translated into many languages, “Vladimir, or Interrupted Flight” (1989).
After the death of Leon Vladi, being in despair, Marina became addicted to alcohol, but she managed to overcome her addiction - she continued to write books.
The misfortunes did not end there: in a car accident she lost her granddaughters and almost lost her son. Since then, the actress often repeats that for some time now she is not afraid of death at all - she passed by too often and too close.
In 2020, a scandal erupted: Vladi put up at auction the death mask of Vladimir Vysotsky and his last poem dedicated to her, signed by the author.
The last poem by Vladimir Vysotsky was sold at auction for 200,000 euros. The actress explained this act as follows: “It’s not just about the money. I turn my life around and rush into the future.”
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