Diary of a Journey - Filming 'Stalker'

[The Ferret]

Excerpts taken from Tarkovsky's 'TIME WITHIN TIME; The diaries 1970-1986."

1970
21 September
'"What you call passion is not moral energy but friction between the soul and the external world." - Hesse.'
(p. 24)

1973
26 January
'I've just read the Strugatsky brothers' science fiction story, Roadside Picnic; that could make a tremendous screenplay for somebody as well.'

1975
4 January
'A thought - what if I were to have a female instead of a male protagonist in Roadside Picnic?

27 March
'I went to see Arkady Strugatsky. He is very pleased that I want to make a film of The Picnic. There are three screenplays, all equally viable.'

3 June
'I have made an agreement with the Strugatskys about The Picnic.'

20 November
'I must make sure that I can film the Strugatsky material this summer. Otherwise it isn't going to work out.'

10 December
'Sizov [writer, director, Mosfilm] liked the Strugatsky synopses. I think they want it to be The Picnic.'

1976
5 August
'Geller [production manager of first version of Stalker] is worried how little time we have left for finishing the "Zone".'

22 August
'If we can start making Stalker in the autumn (it doesn't seem to be definite that we can) we shall start with the scenes in the studio. Then - outdoor locations (Moscow in winter) and starting with April '77 - the Zone (Isfara). It's a pity, of course, since spring in Asia is not autumn.'

14 September
'Letters to be written without fail:
1. Strugatsky (First scene with the wife. The row. He had promised he wouldn't go to the Zone. Slips out quietly.'

20/21 October
'I shall start making Stalker on 26 January.'
'Arkady S. came here yesterday. We have worked out the script almost to the end.'

14 December
'Stalker:
Assistant director: Kolya Dostal.
No sound operator so far.
Stalker is from the word 'to stalk' - to creep.'

1977
7 January
'We have done some tests for Stalker: Solonitsyn, Grinko, Kaydanovsky. I haven't seen them yet.'

24 February
'Shooting on location in Isfara? Postponed because of the earthquake in Shuraba, just where we should have been filming.
We have just filmed Stalker's flat. We must go and look for some new landscapes. A month's extension.'
First day of shooting Stalker - 15 February 1977.

5 May
'On location in Estonia.'

21 July
'It's all awful. We have had to retake practically everything. In fact everything - 1400 metres. No money. No energy. Rerberg is to blame.'

26 August, Tallinn
'A lot has been happening. Total disaster, so conclusive that one actually has the sense of a fresh stage, a new step to be taken - and that gives one hope.
Everything we shot in Tallinn, with Rerberg, had to be scrapped twice over. First, technically; for a start the Mosfilm laboratory processing of the negative (the last of the Kodak). Then the state of instruments and the gear. [...]
[...] We stopped dead for an entire month, the day before we were due to start work on Stalker. That being so, now everything is going to be different; cameraman, set designer (I'll risk using Shavkat), script. (Arkady and Boris are trying to rewrite it at the moment, because of the new Stalker, who, instead of being some kind of drug dealer or poacher, has to be a slave, a believer, a pagan of the Zone.)
So we're starting all over again. Have I the energy?'

28 December
'"-Weakness is great, strength is insignificant. When man is born he is weak and malleable. When he dies he is strong and callused.
-When a tree is still growing it is flexible and tender, and when it is dry and hard, it dies. Callosity and strength are the companions of death.
-Pliancy and weakness are signs of the freshness of being. What has grown hard will therefore never triumph." - Lao-Tzu, taken by Leskov as the epigrah to Pamphalon the Buffoon.'

1978
7 April
'Kalashnikov refused to work with me on Stalker.'
'In mid-May we shall start - for the umpteenth time - to film Stalker. Cameraman: Kniazhinsky; production manager: A. Demidova.'

15 April
'What am I to make of it all?
1. Faulty film three times running. 2700 metres. (Rerberg)
2. After the cameraman and the production manager were replaced Kalashnikov refused to go on working and walked out, having taken 250 metres.
3. I sacked Boim for being drunk.
4. I sacked Abdusalimov for behaving like a bastard.
5. No money forthcoming for a two-part picture.
6. Shooting has to begin (or rather, carry on) in May - and on the 5th-6th I have a coronary.
7. Olga Surkova and I submitted our manuscript to Art, and were given a mass of comments which boil down to a rejection.
Of course it is miraculous, but in a negative sense.'



Then, the chronology of 'Stalker', in brief, based on Olga Surkova, 'The Chronicles of Tarkovskij'. Diary notes with comments.


1977
January

19th
Tests of Marina Neelova for the role of Stalker's wife.

31st
Review of Alisa Freindlikh's tests. Freindlikh is confirmed.

June
end of June
Shooting on location in Tallinn begins.

28th
Shooting in the abandoned electric power station.

29th
Shooting on location.
'It was especially difficult to do make-up for Solonitsin, who was beaten up by Stalker in the corridor.'

30th
Shooting the scenery and miniature landscape.


Shooting on location in Tallinn continues, till the material is lost in autumn.


1978
Beginning of August
The material is lost. Rerberg is fired. Aleksandr Boim is fired. Tarkovskij becomes also the art director of the film. Cameraman Leonid Kalashnikov is assigned, but leaves the project soon. Aleksandr Kniazhinskij joins the crew.

August
15th
Stalker '2'
The crew returns to Tallinn. The script is rewritten in the way that turns causes and effects upside down.

16th
Shooting on location by the dam.
Actors are tired and disillusioned. Tarkovskij is recovering from an infarction.

17th
Review of some material in black and white in the editing room (Tarkovskij, Feiginova and Kaidanovskij present).

18th
Shooting on location. The Zone, the 'rotten water', 'date with the Zone'.

19th
Preparation of the pavilion in Moscow.

December
11th
The last day on set (close-ups of Solonitsin).

1979
March
19th
The assigned date for finishing the film. It was handed in though already the 16th, in order to get a bonus.
Tarkovskij is still editing the sound and re-edits four parts of the finished film.


Compiled by Malishas

[Pauk]

Georgy Rerberg, Mariana Chugunova and Evgenii Tsimbal talk about Stalker


(Selected fragments)

Photographer Murashko, Kaidanovsky, A. Strugatsky. July 1977.


The interview took place in 1997, while making the film 'Stalker's Dreams' about Alexander Kaidanovsky.
Tsimbal became assistant of the props master on February the 1st, 1977. Already in 1976 he was preparing for the work.


Chugunova:
Brothers Strugacky wrote the script "Wish Machine" for director Georgy Kalatozishvili, but he did not get the permission.

Tsimbal:
In the beginning of March 1977 Stalker's flat was filmed in a film studio of Mosfilm. After that the expedition was sent to Isfara.
Rerberg:
Tarkovsky wanted his wife Larisa to play the wife of Stalker, but after the tests Alisa Freindlich got the role.
Tsimbal:
After the earthquake in Isfara a new location had to be found.
Rerberg:
Location in Zaporozhie could not be used because of health threat. Then there was found an abandoned electrical station in Estonia. This and casting of Alexander Kaidanovsky brought the major changes into the script.

Tsimbal:
Andrei, Masha and me arrived in Tallinn the 7th of May, 1977. Five days later the rest of the crew joined us.
17 and 18th: the locations were being prepared.
19th: the rehearsals took place.
20th: shooting begins and lasts 10 days.
Ca. 4th of June: shooting continues, some of the early scenes are re-shot.
Rerberg:
Due to unknown problems there was no black colour on the developed material. That also happened to some other films, using the same material. I was evicted. Kalashnikov came in to shoot STALKER II.

Tsimbal and Chugunova:
In the very beginning there was a scene where the characters were going across a field and Writer was whistling, then they saw a corpse in a hole with water.

Cameraman Kniazhinsky came in for STALKER III (next year).
Many things stayed the same, only the main character was completely changed. Some of other things that appeared in STALKER III is the Library room in Stalkers flat.

In the early variant, again, there had to be a fox that followed the characters in the Zone and not a dog.

Tsimbal:
There was a scene by the electrical power station in STALKER I. The sky was lemoncoloured (Rerberg: I must be the dawn.). The Writer, approaching the station, ends in a trap of haze (the rescuing voice appeared only in STALKER III) and there happens nightmares with him. He begins to perspire in drops through his coat and then his hair falls out. Finally he crawls back on some metal plates, leaving a wet trace which evaporates immediately.

The scenes that were filmed by Rerberg and survived in the final film: the foam on the river and the view of the still water (Stalker's monologue on music).



The article in Russian:
www.kinoart.ru/magazine/04-2006/pabl0406/Rerberg0406/
www.kinoart.ru/magazine/04-2006/pabl0406/Rerberg0406/Rerberg0406-2/