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The Film Shows Images Filled with Life

March 15, 1965, was the day of the film premiere “Unbidden Love” made by the film director Vladimir Monakhov in 1964, based on the short story “Alien Blood” by Mikhail Sholokhov. The film screenplay was written by the well-known screenwriter Arnold Vitol.

The starring roles were played by Ivan Lapikov, (Gavrila Vasilyevich), Natalya Bogoyavlenskaya (Old woman), Yury Nazarov (Nikolay-Pyotr), Roman Khomyatov (Prokhor Ignatyevich Likhovidov) and others.

The actors and firstly the film director V.Monakhov managed to fill the deeply dramatic Sholokhov’s images with the film life. I.Lapikov brilliantly performed his role of the old man Gavrila conveying all the subtleties of the spiritual experience of the man, who at the end of his life lost the only son of his. The viewer believes in each of his gestures, feels the depth of his image. But during the film shooting Lapikov was only 42. Other actors performed well to match him.

The film, like the story by M.Sholokhov, tells about an old villager Gavrila Vasilyevich, who together with his wife let their only son Pyotr join the Whites military service. The son did not return home, he died. Thereafter, the old people lost taste for life, retired in their grief.

But once the Red Army food squad soldiers appeared in the stanitsa, they went around the farmyards and dropped in to Gavrila’s farmyard. Suddenly they were attacked by a gang of kulaks, who dealt with them on the spot. After a while the old man saw that one of the dead was showing signs of life. The host pulled the wounded soldier into the house, and together with his wife they began nursing him like their own son even calling him Pyotr. When the Red Army man regained his consciousness he turned out to be really called Nikolay, originated from the Urals. Nikolay helped his saviours about the household talking with Gavrila Vasilyevich and telling him about his truth. He practically convinced the old man in his own way, but he couldn’t stay and live in the village and returned to his native plant…

The short story by Sholokhov, as well as later the film, is filled with genuine suffering so typical of that period of the open civil confrontation.

The film “Unbidden Love” which became classics of the national cinema, like other screen versions after Sholokhov’s works, is kept in the stores of the Museum-Reserve of M.A.Sholokhov.

Alexey Kochetov