Vladimir Menshov - biography and personal life

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-12 17:37

At the age of 82, the cult Soviet and Russian director, actor and screenwriter Vladimir Menshov, whose biography and personal life are well known to all Russians, died from coronavirus. The director's work of the People's Artist of the RSFSR has always enjoyed great audience love, and the roles he played in various films were remembered for their depth, versatility and talented performance. In total, the master of Soviet and Russian cinema and theater created 171 roles on the cinema screen during his creative activity, starring in his own and other people's films.

Childhood

Vladimir Valentinovich Menshov was born in Baku on September 17, 1939 in the family of NKVD officer Valentin Menshov and Antonina Dubovskaya. His parents met on a ship sailing from the Azerbaijan SSR to Iran.

The director's mother, who came from a kulak family who lived in Astrakhan, specially got a job on a passenger steamer in 1938 so as not to fall under dispossession. It was on the ship that she met her future husband, Valentin Mikhailovich Menshov.

Young people formalized their relationship in 1938. A year later, they had a son, Volodya, and in 1941, a daughter, Irina, was born.

Vladimir Menshov's father, who graduated from the naval school, served on the ship as the first assistant to the captain, and in 1939 he joined the NKVD.

The family of a Soviet officer often had to change their place of residence. In 1947, his father was transferred to Arkhangelsk, where little Volodya went to school. After some time, the family moved to his mother's homeland - to Astrakhan.

In the unsettled post-war period, the boy, whose parents were always at work, read a lot and loved to go to the cinema.

Favorite actor in childhood Vladimir Menshov was Gerard Philip.

At school, Vladimir always studied well. From childhood, his hobby, in addition to books, was cinema. The boy not only watched all Soviet and foreign films, but also enthusiastically read art history works and magazines about cinema.

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The beginning of an acting career

After graduating from high school with a silver medal, in 1957, Vladimir Menshov went to Moscow to enroll in VGIK, but failed the exams and returned to Astrakhan.

His father wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and become a military man, but Vladimir, after unsuccessfully entering a cinematic university, gets a job as a turner at a factory, not giving up his dream of becoming a professional actor. To gain practical experience, he enters the auxiliary staff of the Astrakhan Drama Theater. However, he was able to enter the acting department only in 1961, having changed several working professions in 4 years:

• turner;
• sailor-diver;
• miner at the Vorkuta mine.

Vladimir Menshov went to Moscow four times in a row to enroll in a theater institute.

Having entered the acting department of the Moscow Art Theater School from the fourth time, he was not among the promising students, since the teachers believed that it was impossible to become a sought-after actor with such an appearance.

The director himself later admitted that during his studies he was supported by his future wife, Vera Alentova, with whom he studied on the same course. It was she who helped him, believing in his creativity.

While still a student, Vladimir Menshov was seriously carried away by the theory of cinema and theater, as well as screenwriting. After receiving an acting diploma, he went to the Stavropol Drama Theater by distribution, and a year later he entered graduate school to the outstanding Soviet director Mikhail Romm at VGIK.

After completing his directing courses, Menshov not only begins acting in films in small roles, but also writes scripts for films. He is offered the roles of working people and collective farmers, which a young actor who knows the life of ordinary people from the inside, skillfully embodies on the screen.

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From talented actor to cult director

Vladimir Valentinovich Menshov shot his first film "The Joke" in the late 70s of the last century. When the tape was released in 1977, it had incredible success with viewers of all ages. Since then, such a fate awaited all of Menshov's paintings.

Vladimir Menshov, about whose biography and personal life it is impossible to find scandalous information in the yellow press, at the sunset of the great Soviet cinema and in the difficult years of perestroika, he was able to shoot unique film masterpieces, which the viewer immediately disassembled into quotes:

• "Moscow does not believe in tears";
• "Love and pigeons";
• Shirley-Myrli;
• "The envy of the gods."

At the same time, he acted in films all the time, both in strangers and in his own films, proving his acting skills.

Having become the first Soviet director to receive an American Oscar for the film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears," Menshov was able to receive his award only 8 years later, after the beginning of perestroika in the USSR.

For his contribution to Soviet and Russian art, Vladimir Valentinovich Menshov received three orders, the title of Honored and People's Artist of the Russian Federation, and state prizes.

Despite the success of Menshov's work, which constantly attracted a huge number of viewers, critics and the professional community always greeted their release on screens coldly and even with skepticism. But the more criticized the paintings of V. V. Menshov, the more the viewer loved them.

All paintings by Vladimir Menshov, whose biography and personal life are a vivid example of uncompromising service to Russia and Russian art, immediately after being released on the screens became cult. However, this did not force the director, who achieved everything in his career on his own, without patronage and support, to rest on his laurels and make compromises.

The commercial aspects of the work were alien to Vladimir Valentinovich. He has always defended the interests of Russia in the cinematographic art. In 2007, at the MTV-Russia award ceremony, he publicly refused to present the first prize to the scandalous film "Bastards", saying that the picture distorts the real history of Russia and insults the Soviet people who gave their lives in the fight against fascism.

In the last years of his life, Vladimir Valentinovich Menshov was actively involved in political activities. He entered the Political Council of the For Truth Party, created by the writer Zakhar Prilepin, and was going to run for the State Duma. But these plans did not come true: the cult director Vladimir Menshov, at the age of 82, died of coronavirus in the 15th city hospital, where he had been in serious condition for more than a month before.

Personal life

Vladimir Menshov had a happy personal life and a friendly family. He has been married to his only wife and muse, actress Vera Alentova for 50 years.

The couple met while studying at the Moscow Art Theater School and formalized their relationship by the end of their studies. For whole years, young spouses, who already had a little daughter, had to live apart due to the fact that Menshov received a distribution to Stavropol, and Alentova remained in the capital. When after a while the acting couple received a two-room apartment, the spouses, as if splashing out the negative accumulated in the course of life and material troubles, decide to live separately. However, after some time Alentova and Menshov converge again, realizing that they cannot live without each other.

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Officially, the spouses did not formalize the divorce, since this would have made it difficult for Vladimir Valentinovich to travel abroad, where he often went for work.

In one of his interviews, Vladimir Menshov admitted that the letters that they wrote to each other in the first years of their family life, when they lived apart, forced Alentov to restore their relationship.

After the reunification, the couple got married in a church, for which Menshov had to be baptized.

Vladimir Menshov had a daughter, Julia, in marriage, who made a successful career as an actress and TV presenter. Julia has two children - a son and a daughter.

Causes of death

All the central media reported that Vladimir Menshov had died, but before that it was not reported that the director had been struggling with a severe coronavirus infection over the past two months.

Relatives reported that he remained at home until the last moment, until the oxygen saturation dropped to 89, after which he was urgently hospitalized.

The cause of death of the cult director was the consequences of viral pneumonia, against the background of which respiratory failure of the third degree developed. It is known that the widow of Vladimir Menshov, Vera Valentinovna Alentova, is also infected and is in the hospital.

Outcomes

In conclusion, we can say the following about the death of Vladimir Menshov, his biography, work and personal life:

1. The country has lost an outstanding figure of Russian culture, who created a truly national cinema, knowing firsthand the true life of an ordinary person.
2. Vladimir Valentinovich Menshov, who became a bright star of Soviet cinema at the last stage of its existence, was able to make a huge contribution to the development of Soviet and Russian cinema, creating his own unique films and film roles.
3. It is officially known that the Soviet and Russian director, actor, screenwriter, teacher, public and political figure Vladimir Valentinovich Menshov will be buried at the Novodevichy cemetery on July 8, 2021.