Regina Razuma’s prolific career in Latvian and Soviet cinema: A retrospective

I cannot write a complete review of Regina Razum’s (1951–2023) film roles. It requires a lot more research and a lot more time than we have now in the sudden confusion of her passing. Currently, one can only outline the directions in which future researchers should walk, for example, analyzing the so-called Estonian period in Regina Razuma’s filmography, or measuring the international fame that she earned, if only on the huge scale of the former USSR, or go deep and explore what is hidden right here in the territory of Latvian cinema behind the symbolic title “Rolanda Kalniņš actress”.

Fiery Spaniard

The portal of the National Cinema Center is currently providing a small insight into Latvian cinema history by publishing the collection of Regina Razuma’s film works Filmas.lv, but the filmography of the actress cannot be included in one collection, both the beginning and the continuation remain behind. The very first appearance of Regina Razumas on the screen in the film of director Olħerts Dunker Butterfly dance (1971) is a rather delicate tangle of all kinds of meanings, from which further symbolic threads could be unraveled. Sonia is a nameless role, Regina Razum is seen only at the very beginning of the film, in the first minutes even before the credits, and fits magnificently into the great story of the film’s main character, Harry Moore, about his life’s successes: the career of a film actor, sophisticated circles, a foreign car and a beautiful wife, for whom he is on the spot remembers a more impressive biography: “Sonia is not Sonia at all – Samukita Fernandez Maurike Conde de Ozerio, a Spanish woman. A fiery Spanish woman with a temperament!”

So, the most important requirements for an actress in this role are appearance, height and the ability to move, and Regina Razuma, of course, has all of this, because she applied for this first contact with the cinema as part of Latvia’s only professional folk dance group, the State Dance Ensemble Daile, soloist since the first concert performance in 1969. It is significant that she left this job precisely because of the cinema – in 1974, when Rolands Kalniņš started filming the legendary, later discontinued and destroyed feature film Seaside climate and envisages the main female role for Regina Razuma, Dailes manager Uldis Žagata comes with an ultimatum – either dancing or filming! Regina Razuma proudly chooses cinema.

Then she is already a Rolandas Kalniņš actress, having passed the baptism of fire In the oven (1972), in which she understood for the first time what the work of a film actress means. It is interesting that the gentlemanly director Kalniņš Cepļas kept the tension during the filming, threatening that the actress could be replaced in the role of Austria if Razuma did not cope. Obviously, this was the most psychologically correct method for mobilizing the actress’s forces, because later Regina Razuma always emphasized that Rolands Kalniņš is one of the most important people in her creative life. Rolands Kalniņš also appreciates it In the oven the newly discovered actress and invites her in his next film Seaside climate already in the main role – as the coolly restrained and professional “gas cantor” engineer Daina, who, however, will play Cleopatra in the amateur theater production.

Outside Latvia

It was at this time that a turning point in Regina Razuma’s film life took place, which is not particularly highlighted in the history of Latvian cinema, but opened the gates to a much wider territory and other film studios for the actress at that time. In the early 1970s, Russian guest director Sergejs Tarasov shot several feature films at the Riga Film Studio, and the last of them is Robin Hood’s Arrows (1975), in which Regina was assigned the main female role – Mary, the beloved girl of Robin Hood. Latvian moviegoers and critics do not value this very cosmopolitan product, in which both Latvian, Russian and Lithuanian actors play (if only for the amusing interplay of Eduard Pāvul and Vijas Artmanes in the supporting roles, in the characters of an elderly loving couple), but in the territory of the USSR this rather simple the historical melodrama gets a lot of attention, the main actor Boris Khmelnytskyi “wakes up famous”, and the beautiful Maria is also noticed next to him, although the actress is not given too difficult tasks in this film.

Regina Razuma is starting to be offered episodes and roles in other film studios as well – in Russia, Moldova, Lithuania, Ukraine and most of all in the Estonian film studio Tallinnfilm. In the late 1980s, the actress regularly traveled between Riga and Tallinn, because, as in the magazine Evil In 1987, film critic Galina Frolova wrote, in Latvia, Regina has a theater and a son, and in Estonia – filming and a husband (the outstanding Estonian avant-garde composer and author of great film music Sven Grinbergs). Among her “other republics” works, Regina Razum herself highlights the film of the Estonian director Olav Neuland at that time Requiem/Requiem (1984), in which she plays a psychologically complex role – Evelina, a German army doctor, who was taken prisoner at the end of the Second World War and forced to treat a Soviet soldier in an Estonian farm, gradually losing the pathos of the ideologically convinced National Socialist.

Of course, a large number of cinematographers respect Regina Razum’s effective image – she fits in very well, for example dark movie in the atmosphere created by director Arvo Krusement in the film Band/Band (1985) about 1920s America, and in science fiction films like Igor Voznesensky Aquanauts (1979). The musical fairy-tale film of the Belarusian film studio gained wide popularity throughout the USSR Nepamet/Do not leave (1989), in which Regina Razum plays a gorgeous character, the rather poisonous queen’s sister Otilia, which contrasts sharply with the lyrically rosy moods of the royal court.

In a special status

Galina Frolova’s magazine Evil compassionately notes that this is probably the fate of all particularly beautiful actresses – they don’t fit in films about modern life, they are “too luxurious”, but “retro” roles rarely appear… However, there are no idle periods in Regina Razuma’s filmography, and the spectrum is also wide enough in Latvian films ; even more – she is gradually gaining a special status, as assessed by Normunds Naumanis in 1994, reviewing the performance of the New Riga Theater Dorian Gray’s hometownin which Regina Razum is assigned the role of Lord Henry: “Henry, the teller of wise sentences, is equally handsome, it seems, eternally handsome … and therefore it is Regina Razum. It must be admitted that this actress is a “sign” in the context of our culture: as one of to the favorite models of the painter Maijas Tabakas, as an actress of the film director Rolandas Kalniņas, as… yes, it is a more experienced sign of beauty that seduces Dorian in Alvja Hermani’s show.”

Returning to Latvian cinema in this short overview, I can only recall a few significant moments that confirm the special image of Regīnas Razumas, cultivated over the years, and may serve as an inspiration for future research. The fact that brand new directors were not afraid of this noble aristocratic actress and considered her suitable for their rebellious messages – the most extreme example is perhaps Aigara Graubas and Igor Lingas Courage to kill (1993), in which Regina Razum is a cynical, sinful life-weary but still beautiful and physically fit stripper in an expensive nightclub. It should be remembered that later Jānis Nords also offered Regīna Razuma a role in her debut film (Amateur, 2008). The fact that Regina Razum could also be an “actress of Viestura Kairis”, because he also invited the artist in his first film works, offering the role of the sprightly mother of the groom in a short film Wedding (2000) and the heartwarming “double role” of pregnant women with Maija Apini in leaving on the way (2001). The fact that in the centenary film of Anna Viduleya The new man (2018) Regina Razuma plays a seemingly small, but crucial role in the main character’s life path – Mrs. Melmenis, whose prototype is the legendary Emīlija Benjamiņa, decides to draw the attention of the whole society to the young artist, and Jura Upenāja’s career has begun.

We can still smile when we remember how hard it is to believe that the series Archie and Nellie (2021) the main character would have gained weight when Regina Razum worriedly touched her always perfectly slim waist, and how the actress once allowed herself to get fat while participating in the film of the joke show company I love your daughter (2004). And another moment of emotion – about the fact that Rolands Kalniņš still trusted “his actress” even 35 years after the first collaboration and gave her a role in his last feature film Bitter wine (2007), in which she is one of the five most important women in the main character’s life, but even more so because of how deep and important, although completely invisible, the director gave the actress a cameo role in the film Tapers (1989). Regina Razum appears in the frame maybe only for a minute, but she is Yanina, the genius hunchback, painter Hubert’s muse and true love. You have to hear the deep warmth with which Hubert pronounces her name. And that “Janīna” sounds just like “Regīna”…