Chervona Ruta (film)


Chervona Ruta is a 1971 Soviet Ukrainian musical film written by Miroslav Skochilyas and directed by Roman Oleksiv, starring Sofia Rotaru and Vasyl Zinkevych alongside popular Soviet Ukrainian ensembles. One of the first modern Soviet musical films, and the first modern Ukrainian musical filmed in Bukovina and the Carpathian mountains in the Ukrainian SSR, Chervona Ruta features short dialogues combined with legendary pop-folk songs in the Ukrainian language and characteristic Western Ukraine dances in modern pop choreography. The film was released in both a Ukrainian and a Russian language version, though in both versions all but one of the songs are in Ukrainian.
Translated from the Червона рута – "Chervona Ruta" literally means "Red rue". However, the expression became a proper noun in Ukrainian due to popular use. The term derives from the old East Slavic legend, according to which a girl who finds a red colored rue on Ivan Kupala Day, will be happy in love.

Plot

Oksana is a young and beautiful Carpathian girl. On the "Donetsk-Verkhovyna" train she becomes acquainted with a young miner from Donetsk called Boris. The travellers fall in love, but are parted when they arrive at their destination. In the Carpathian mountains their paths diverge, but Boris discovers where she is staying. The couple meet again and rekindle their love. Their friends invite them to perform in a concert for vacationers at a mountain resort, where they sing about their feelings for each other.

Cast

The idea to make a movie about Ukrainian pop-folk culture set in the Carpathian mountains arose from the fame of Smerichka and the popularity of the song "Chervona Ruta" in the Soviet Union. The original idea was to make a movie about Smerichka, using Vasily Zinkevich as the main actor. As there was no female leading actor in Smerichka the scenario was changed to a simple plot about a sudden blaze of love between Boris, an unsophisticated miner, and the Bukovinian beauty Oksana. By 1971 Sofia Rotaru was already a well-known singer in Bukovina both for her pop-folk songs and for her victory at the 1968 International Song Festival in Bulgaria. She was at that time a teacher at the Chernivtsi Musical College. When filming of the first Ukrainian musical started in Yaremche Rotaru was given the role of Oksana.
In the film Sofia Rotaru performs "Grey-winged Bird" – the Italian hit song L'immensità, professionally translated in Ukrainian by Roman Kudlyk, "Draw Me the Night" and "Autumn Is Close", and also "Vodohray".
The recording of "Vodohray" by the tenor Vasil and the alto Sofia was not used in the final version of the film. Instead Nazariy Yaremchuk's voice was dubbed in place of Vasyl Zinkevych, and Mariya Isak's voice was dubbed in place of Sofia Rotaru in the song. It appears that the original performance had a defective soundtrack. In the film Maria Isak appears fifth in the row of five girls, for a couple of seconds.
The fact that the soundtrack for the song "Vodohray" was recorded by other singers was revealed only thirty years later. After the release of the television movie, the singers became famous in the USSR and in Eastern Europe.
Songs performed in the film:
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