Ivan Mosjoukine | |
---|---|
Born |
Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin 26 September 1889 Kondol, Saratov Governorate, Russian Empire |
Died | 18 January 1939 Paris, France |
(aged 49)
Other names | Jwan Mosjukin Ivan Mozzukhine Iwan Mosjoukine |
Occupation | Actor |
Years active | 1911-1936 |
Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin (Russian: Иван Ильич Мозжухин; IPA: [ɪˈvan ɪˈlʲjitɕ mɐˈʑːʉxʲɪn]; 26 September [O.S. 8 October] 1889—18 January 1939), usually billed using the French transliteration Ivan Mosjoukine, was a Russian silent film actor.
Mosjoukine was born in Kondol, in the Saratov Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Penza Oblast in Russia) and studied law at Moscow State University. In 1910, he left academic life to join a troupe of traveling actors from Kiev, with which he toured for a year, gaining experience and a reputation for dynamic stage presence. Upon returning to Moscow, he launched his screen career with the 1911 adaptation of Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata. He also starred in A House in Kolomna (1913, after Pushkin), Pyotr Chardynin directed drama Do You Remember? opposite the popular Russian ballerina Vera Karalli (1914), Nikolay Stavrogin (1915, after Dostoyevsky's The Devils aka The Possessed), The Queen of Spades (1916, after Pushkin) and other adaptations of Russian classics.
Mosjoukine's most lasting contribution to the theoretical concept of film as image is the legacy of his own face in recurring representation of illusory reactions seen in Lev Kuleshov's psychological montage experiment which demonstrated the Kuleshov Effect. In 1918, the first full year of the Russian Revolution, Kuleshov assembled his revolutionary illustration of the application of the principles of film editing out of footage from one of Mosjoukine's Tsarist-era films which had been left behind when he, along with his entire film production company, departed for the relative safety of Crimea in 1917.