5 things that connected French actress Marina Vlady with Russia

1. She was born into a family of Russian émigrés

Marina Vlady, born Ekaterina-Marina Polyakova-Baidarova, was born in France into a family of Russian émigrés. Her father was an opera singer who left Russia during World War I, while her mother, Militsa Envald, came from the family of a Russian general. Speaking about her connection to Russian culture, Vlady once said: “I am Russian, only with a French passport.”

2. She became famous in the USSR after the movie ‘La Sorcière’

In 1956, Vlady played the lead role in the movie ‘La Sorcière’, based on Alexander Kuprin’s novella ‘Olesya’. The movie was released in the USSR in 1959 and was a tremendous success: in its first year alone, it was seen by about 36.5 million. That same year, the actress visited the USSR for the first time for the ‘Week of French Cinema’. In Moscow, she was greeted like a real star. “I remember getting out of the car and crowds of girls rushed towards me, each of them a copy of me: loose hair, bangs. They kissed me all over – I was covered in lipstick,” recalled Vlady fondly.

3. She became the muse of a Soviet bard

In 1967, during a visit to the USSR, she met Vladimir Vysotsky – a popular Soviet actor, poet and singer-songwriter. According to him, he had been captivated by the actress after watching ‘La Sorcière’: after seeing her on screen, he declared that, one day, she would become his wife.

In 1970, they got married and Vlady became his muse – Vysotsky dedicated several songs and poems to her. After the wedding, she regularly visited the USSR and their family life passed between France and the Soviet Union. To make travel easier, Vlady even joined the French Communist Party.

After Vysotsky’s death in 1980, Vlady wrote a memoir, ‘Vladimir or Interrupted Flight’.

4. She starred in Soviet & Russian cinema

Her first role was in Sergei Yutkevich’s Soviet-French movie ‘Subject for a Short Story’ in 1969. She got the role of Lika Mizinova, Anton Chekhov’s muse. “Nine months of filming, a cold winter,” recalled Vlady. “We worked terribly slowly. It annoyed me, at first. Saturday was a day off and, in my opinion, a lot of time was wasted… And only when I understood what time ‘in the Russian way’ meant did this manner of working become clear to me. Time is not money: a person sees infinity before them.”

This was not her only such experience. In 1985, she played Marko Vovchok in the Soviet-Bulgarian TV series ‘In Search of Captain Grant’; in 1991, in the Russian movie ‘The Vampire’; and, a year later, she played Catherine II in the Russian-Japanese movie ‘Dreams of Russia’ (1992).

5. She handed over their correspondence to ‘Rosarkhiv’

For many decades, Vlady kept photographs, belongings, items and letters connected with Vysotsky. In 2004, she transferred their correspondence of 446 letters to ‘Rosarkhiv’ (‘Russian Archive’). The main condition was confidentiality: she asked that the letters not be published during her lifetime.

In 2015, part of Vysotsky’s belongings from Vlady’s collection were put up for auction in Paris. It caused a wide public outcry in Russia: among the lots were the poet’s personal items, his death mask and also his last poem, addressed to his wife. She explained her decision to part with these objects as follows: “I’m turning my life around and throwing myself into the future!”