Vladimir Vysotsky Video
These four clips trace the range of a performer who became, by his death, the unofficial voice of his generation. As Hamlet at the Taganka, in Pasternak's translation and Liubimov's staging, Vysotsky embodied the nobility and desperation of the Russian intelligentsia—and perhaps foreshadowed his own fate. As the detective Zheglov in The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed, he gave menacing form to the Soviet fascination with power exercised without hesitation. His Song About a Friend from Vertical, copied and replayed at home, carried him to a national audience years before official recording. The funeral footage shows mourning turned into public action.
Vysotsky as Hamlet (1971). Vysotsky reads Hamlet's famous monologue, in Boris Pasternak's translation
The Meeting Place Cannot be Changed (1979). Vysotsky plays a hard-edged detective hunting down a dangerous gang of criminals in post-war Moscow.
Song About a Friend (1967). One of Vysotsky's earliest film roles about a test of friendship in the mountains.
Funeral and farewell footage (July 1980). Moscow turned out to bid farewell to its favorite son, despite the heavy police presence during the Olympics.