Operator Pavel Lebeshev: biography, creative path

Director - the main person on the set, responsible for the result of the film. But cinema is the art of portraying. In it, the creative idea is embodied by a person with a high level of technical knowledge - the operator. Happiness, if it's like-minded person and a real professional in his business. Such as Pavel Lebeshev - operator-legend, whose departure from life in 2003 was called the end of an era in the national cinema.

The Son of the Operator

Cult films "The Girl with the Character", "The Shield and the Sword", "The Girls" are the works of the operator Timofey Lebeshev - his father. Since 1957, his son Paul was already helping his parent on the site. There was one for the mechanic, and for the assistant. But at first he dreamed of becoming a mathematician. Born in Moscow in February 1940, he spent his childhood in Baku, being with his parents in the evacuation. There he learned to cook, afterwards making a real meal out of food. Mother, being the director of popular science films, was often ill because of heart problems. And my son had to run home from school at break times to feed her. Pavel Lebeshev would become a mathematician, if not for a friend who infected pictures in high school with art. Here was the son at the studio "Mosfilm", where his father worked.

Education

Enter VGIK to get a professional education, failed. Pavel Lebeshev, whose family was known in cinematographic circles, was forced to study in absentia. On his misadventure there are whole legends. For over 10 years of college, a young man has been ruled out several times, restoring only thanks to the authority of the head of the department, A. D. Golovny. Since his first independent work, Lebeshev has demonstrated amazing talent and skill. And to explain, as well as with the help of what methods he achieved the result, can not.

In 1970, the film "Belorusskiy Vokzal", the cameraman's work of the student, made such a strong impression on Golovnya that he instructed third-year student Lebeshev fives until the end of the training, admitting to the protection of the diploma. After years of ordeal along with the Oxford Award, Pavel Lebeshev will receive a long-awaited document on education.

The beginning of the creative biography

The first serious work before the "Belarusian Station" at the operator was a black and white film "Angel" (1967) by Andrei Smirnov. The painting has a difficult rolling fate - it has been lying on the shelf for almost 20 years, but it was her Lebeshev Pavel Timofeevich who considered his main success. Smirnov entrusted the work to the beginning master only because no one agreed to implement his plan. It was important for him to do all the shooting on location, so that the natural light provided a sense of amateur film and Michelangelo's frescoes.

He remembers that to his question whether the operator will manage without additional light, he replied: "I can without a film!" Humor and always a good mood are the hallmark of Lebeshev, who completely fulfilled the director's demands. Andrei Smirnov proposed to continue cooperation already in the color film "Belarusian Railway Station", widely presented on the screens of the country. He made the operator extremely demanded by the directors: Larissa Shepitko and Sergei Solovyov, Georgy Danelia and Sergei Bodrov, Sr.. But really successful were the joint work with Nikita Mikhalkov.

The legendary tandem

They thought and felt the same way. This was shown by the first joint picture "My own among strangers, a stranger among my own" (1974). The operator and artist Alexander Adabashyan became true co-authors of the director and his devoted friends for many years. Their fates intertwined. Adabashyan even became the husband of his own sister Lebeshev, unfortunately, died early in life.

Mikhalkov did not develop the final of the film, where four comrades meet after hard trials and minutes of distrust and run towards each other. After a few sleepless nights Pavel Lebeshev offered to show their running in real time, and hugs - in the past. This option also entered the picture. The operator managed to make the environment almost animate, to connect dreams and dreams, creating a feeling of almost biblical eternity.

Having made seven pictures together, the best of which Lebeshev considered "The Slave of Love", where he had to use a slightly lighted domestic film "Tasma" to create a retro effect, the creative tandem disintegrated. Mikhalkov felt that to his last film "Without Witnesses" Lebeshev got tired, and he did not like the director's work. Until the last days he will consider this film as the creative failure of Nikita Sergeyevich.

For 14 years they did not cross, working with other filmmakers. For Lebeshev, this was a huge personal experience, although he had many creative successes. For a joint film with Bodrov senior in 1996 he will receive the State Prize, being already a People's Artist of Russia. But all the time he will be zealously watching the work of Mikhalkov, who selected people with Lebeshev's professional handwriting for the role of operators. The creative union will be reunited in 1999 in the picture "The Barber of Siberia", in order to bring two laurels to the two outstanding masters again.

Master's handwriting

Gradually, three cinematographic schools emerged in the domestic cinema: the St. Petersburg, the Georgian and the Moscow, with Lebeshev as the leader. His art is to make every frame unforgettable there is no equal. Everyone is accustomed to watching the work of the operator, the lion's share of working time which goes to the production of light and only a small part - actually on the shooting. Pavel Lebeshev, performing the task of the director, is ready to look for unusual moves in order to emphasize the play of the actor.

Thus, in the film "Unfinished Piece for a Mechanical Piano", the face of the actress during the dialogue with Platonov was illuminated with each puff of a cigarette. This was achieved using a simple kerosene lamp. In order to show the scene of a duel in the "Barber of Siberia" from all sides, the operator came up with a design that went down in history as a "pashamobile". In his receptions, he never repeated, considering it boring and monotonous. In total in the filmography of the master more than 50 works, where Pavel Lebeshev - the operator.

Family, interesting facts

Spending most of his life on expeditions, Lebeshev was never seen in novels with actresses. His wife Natalia worked as an editor at APN and kept a home, raising two sons. The youngest passed away at 25, the grandchildren grow from the older one. He did not follow in the footsteps of his father, but is engaged in computer graphics, having achieved great professionalism.

Pavel Lebeshev died in 2003 at the age of 63 years. On February 23, watching the movie "Two Fighter" on TV, his heart stopped. Cinematographers of the whole country perceived his death as the completion of a whole era in the development of motion picture art, when the domestic film was not the best quality masters created masterpieces of the highest standard.

Until the last days Lebeshev worked, having completed a joint picture with the Polish director Jerzy Hoffman, whose premiere he was not destined to see. Nikita Mikhalkov, who always considered a friend a talented nugget, called him "a separate planet," without which his films would lose that subtlety and tenderness for which they liked spectators.