“And the tears fell” by Kira Bulychev, summary

"And Tears Flowed" is a 1982 screenplay written by Kir Bulychev, Alexander Volodin, and Georgy Daneliya. It’s a modern take on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale "The Snow Queen": the Troll’s evil mirror shatters, its shards scatter across the world, and land in people’s eyes in different eras.

In 1982, Daneliya made a film based on this script, starring Yevgeny Leonov. The film received a limited second-screen release and never received a wide release.

Fragments through the centuries

The action opens in a gray desert, where the old Troll and his apprentices — Grey-Eyed, Hunchback, and Young — assemble a mosaic from the shards of a broken mirror. Each shard represents a life. A medieval knight, struck in the eye by a shard, gallops toward a spear embedded in an oak tree, but his horse brakes at the last moment — and his master, crashing against the trunk, finds himself astride the spear. His soul immediately reaches the Troll and dances to the apprentices’ song until the old man snaps his finger. A violinist in 18th-century Versailles is struck by a shard during a court ballet: the music turns into a piercing screech, the violinist smashes his instrument on a balcony railing in Paris, and drinks poison. An American bride in 1920 is struck by a shard on the steps of a cathedral in New York City — at the sight of her groom, her face contorts with disgust, and she finds herself on the ledge of a skyscraper.

A splinter in Vasin’s eye

On an autumn evening in Zarechensk, a Volga region town, Pavel Ivanovich Vasin, a plump, good-natured official from the district executive committee, is riding a trolleybus. The trolleybus bumps over a pothole, and Vasin looks out the window — and a shard of mirror hits him in the eye. His face immediately changes to a mask of arrogant suffering. At home, everything is starting to irritate him: his wife, Irina, is composing flattering poems over the phone for his new boss, Teterin; his daughter-in-law, Lyusya, is smoking in the kitchen; his son, Gera, is turning down the music and not working on his thesis; and his four-year-old granddaughter, Mashenka, is watching the show "In the World of Business."

Vasin intercepts the phone from his wife and reads Teterina an obscene couplet instead of her poetry. Then he accuses Lyusya of being calculating — she supposedly married his son counting on her bribe-taking father-in-law. In the bedroom, he throws his wife’s ironed dresses onto the floor. He shakes the bathroom tiles with his fist, three of which immediately fall off — "I warned you three years ago!" — and leaves the house with a toothbrush and razor in his jacket pocket.

A night without shelter

The hotel turns away a local. At the restaurant, Vasin disgustedly leaves the table, leaving behind a glass of champagne he didn’t drink. The taxi driver doesn’t give him eighteen kopecks in change — Vasin forces him to drive until the meter shows the correct amount. On the dark street, three trolls approach him — he takes off his watch and hands it to the Hunchback, but they return it and disappear.

Vasin knocks on his colleague Bobylev’s door, notices a reproduction of "Naked Maja" on the wall, and decides his colleague has set a trap for "an important man" — he leaves without explaining the reason. Vasily, drunk as usual, sits in the gazebo in Bobylev’s yard, kicked out "on principle" by his wife; his simple wisdom, "let him invite you — bring him up," proves unexpectedly appropriate. Vasin returns home drenched, discovering that Hera and Lyusya have taken Mashenka and left. He spends the night on the couch in the dining room, munching on a loaf of bread.

Day of the War with Disadvantages

The next morning, Vasin arrives at work a changed man — a conqueror. He immediately organizes the demolition of temporary garages, following a long-standing but unimplemented decision, refuses to approve the design of a factory sports complex without a dog park, and ignores a call from the vice president of the USSR Academy of Sciences, who was defending a certain Gayeva. His boss, Sorokin, hides from Vasin "in the clinic" — Vasin spots his silhouette in an uncurtained window. His colleague, Bobylev, asks to use the garage behind a bumper but is refused. Natasha Solovyova tries on new raspberry-colored pants at work — Vasin reprimands her and deprives her of her bonus.

At Grandfather Vanechkin’s garage on 7 Stroitelnaya Street, an elderly Civil War veteran greets a demolition worker armed with a double-barreled shotgun. Vasin achieves his goal in an original way: he reports that in May 1943, in the village of Bersnevka in the Oryol region, his grandfather’s son, a recipient of the Order of Glory, stole a bar of soap from his duffel bag. Grandfather Vanechkin, stunned by this "incriminating" detail, puts the gun away. Next, an old woman, Gayeva, comes to Vasin’s house; her garage is registered in the name of her grandson, a geologist. It turns out that she was the one who wrote the song "A Christmas Tree Was Born in the Forest" as a child. Vasin, shocked by this, hands her the tape recorder he confiscated from his son — "You’ll dictate it, it’s convenient for creative work" — and bitterly mutters, "They cut down my Christmas tree."

Scene at the Regional Project

Vasin arrives at Oblproekt, where Irina is reciting poetry to her colleagues at the farewell ceremony for veteran Kovalev. At the most solemn moment, Vasin calls out to his wife three times from the door, interrupting the ceremony. When Irina reaches the verse about Teterin, her lips naturally utter her husband’s version — the one with the obscene ending. She screams at her husband, "Go to hell! I hate you!" and bursts into tears. Vasin gets into the car and smiles reservedly: victory.

Ermakov’s groom and the suicide attempt

In the courtyard of an uninhabited building, Vasin discovers a newlywed couple, Sasha Yermakov and Nastya, preparing for their wedding on construction doors instead of tables. Vasin puts a stop to the celebration. Soon, the apartment’s owner, Belozerskaya, calls him and informs him that Sasha might commit suicide after breaking up with Nastya — she even hid the rope.

Vasin goes to Ermakov. He sits down at the table, writes out a wedding license, then ties a rope to a chandelier hook and places the noose around his neck. "Young man, you wanted to take your own life to blame the bureaucrat Vasin — it won’t work!" he says, and kicks the stool out from under his feet. The hook bursts from the ceiling, Vasin collapses onto the table, and the table crumbles. In the gray desert, the song of Troll’s students ceases. Sasha calls the incident a trick and turns away. Outside, the wind carries Vasin’s suicide note straight toward the Volga.

The splinter comes out

Natasha Solovyova finds Vasin sitting on the wet ground and offers to bring him a blanket. She doesn’t notice his face flush and a tear roll down his cheek — he didn’t know how and wasn’t used to crying. At that moment, a shard of mirror rolls onto his lapel. In the gray desert, the trolls exchange glances, the old Troll throws up his hands — the dance ends.

Vasin calls his son, Gera, but he refuses to forgive him for what he did to his mother. After returning the rope to Belozerskaya, Vasin sees through a crack in the shutters Nastya quietly enter Sasha’s room with a tape recorder and a hat in her hands — the very one she gave him. Vasin’s own voice, from the restaurant recording, comes over the speaker: "Charge me for a glass of these bubbles." At these words, Sasha and Nastya suddenly come to life. Natasha approaches — "Sasha isn’t here, they’re at the registry office right now" — and throws a blanket over Vasin’s shoulders. He thanks her, apologizes, and leaves — "I’m busy."