Actress
About Actress
Operetta star Zoya Strelnikova is evacuated to the rear with her theater and given a room in the house of Agafya Lukinichna, whose son is a major at the front. Agafya has no patience for a cheerful actress in wartime. Strelnikova quits the company and takes work as a nurse in a military hospital. The patient she grows close to is Major Pyotr Markov, who is recovering from an eye wound. She does not know he is Agafya's son. He tells her he loves operetta and once had a crush on a leading lady. He asks her to play a record from his bedside table. It is her own voice. She breaks the disc and, rather than admit it, sings the song. The room realizes the nurse is the actress.
Cast & crew
More about Actress
Leonid Trauberg directed. Nikolai Erdman and Mikhail Volpin wrote the script. Andrei Moskvin photographed. Oscar Sandler wrote the music. Galina Sergeyeva plays Strelnikova. Boris Babochkin, Mikhail Zharov, and Zinaida Morskaya are in the cast. The Soviet premiere was April 22, 1943.
Themes
Background
Theaters were evacuated from the front cities. The film puts an operetta company in that rear, then sends its star into a military hospital.
Making
Erdman and Volpin, comedy writers, built the plot on a broken record and a blind patient so the disguise can last one song.
Look
Andrei Moskvin shot the boarding-house scenes and the hospital, including the moment Markov asks for the record he cannot watch her play.
Music
Oscar Sandler composed the score. The plot turns on a record of Strelnikova's operetta singing, which she then performs live.
Preservation
A print survives.
Notes
- Markov's injury is to his eyes, so he knows the song before he can see who is singing it.
- The record in the bedside table is a commercial disc of Strelnikova.
- Agafya's objection is not to the hospital work. It is to an operetta singer being cheerful in wartime.
- The Russian title is Aktrisa.
- Trauberg was working away from Leningrad, in the studios relocated to the rear.
Scenes
- Agafya tells the actress there is no place for light songs in wartime.
- Strelnikova breaks Markov's record and sings the number herself.
- The hospital recognizes the nurse as the singer on the disc.