2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25
Mikhail Romm is a famous Soviet director and screenwriter. He is a laureate of several Stalin Prizes and a People's Artist of the USSR, many of his films have received various prizes and awards. He is a classic of Soviet cinema, who influenced the formation of the aesthetics of Soviet cinema and became a teacher for a whole galaxy of famous film directors.
Biography
Mikhail Romm was born in Irkutsk, where shortly before that his father had been exiled for underground revolutionary work, in 1901. According to various sources, his date of birth is January 24 or February 21. His parents were doctors: his father was a bacteriologist, his mother was a dentist. A year after the birth of Mikhail, the family was sent to Zaigraevo (Buryatia), where they lived for several years, after which they moved to Moscow.
There Romm studied at the gymnasium and entered the School of Sculpture and Architecture. Film critics note that sculpting influenced Romm's style as a director - his films are characterized by great attention to texture, a special relief of faces. During the Civil War, Romm joined the Red Army, wherewas a signalman, and also served in the food commission. After returning, he entered the Higher Artistic and Technical Institute; in addition, in 1922-1923 he studied at the cinematographic workshop of Lev Kuleshov.
After graduating from the institute in 1925, Mikhail Romm worked as a journalist, screenwriter and translator.
Since 1931, Romm was an assistant director at the Soyuzkino studio, and in 1934 his first directorial film, Pyshka, was released.
In 1936 he met his future wife, actress Yelena Kuzmina, who starred in his film Thirteen.
In 1937 and 1939, Romm made two films about Lenin ("Lenin in October" and "Lenin in 1918"), thanks to which he received official recognition.
In 1941 he made one of the most famous paintings of his career, The Dream.
Since 1938, Romm taught directing at VGIK. Among his students are many classics of Soviet and Russian cinema: A. Tarkovsky, V. Shukshin, T. Abuladze, D. Asanova, G. Chukhrai, B. Yashin, S. Solovyov and others.
In 1956 Romm's melodrama "Murder on Dante Street" was released. The film was a success at the box office and glorified the young Mikhail Kozakov who played in it.
In 1962, he makes the film "Nine Days of One Year", which becomes a new stage in his creative career.
In 1965, Romm made a documentary film “Ordinary Fascism” - a study using cinematography of the phenomenon of mass psychosis. The last documentary film by Mikhail Romm "And yet I believe …" remainedunfinished and was completed after his death by M. Khutsiev and E. Klimov.
He died on November 1, 1971, was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
And now a few words about the most famous films of Mikhail Romm.
“Pyshka”
Romm's debut film "Pyshka", released in 1934, became one of the last silent films in the Soviet Union - in the same year, the complete transition of Soviet cinematography to sound cinema officially took place. “Dumpling” (based on the story of the same name by Guy de Maupassant) is a comedy denouncing the vices of bourgeois society, telling about hypocritical gentlemen and a respectable prostitute. One of the many advantages of the film is the cast: for example, Faina Ranevskaya played her first film role in this film.
“Thirteen”
Michael Romm's 1936 film "Thirteen" was inspired by westerns, namely John Ford's "The Lost Patrol". "Thirteen" is an adventure and war movie that tells about the struggle of a Red Army detachment with the Basmachi (a partisan movement in Central Asia that opposes Soviet power). This picture is considered one of the first Soviet "desert films" or "Easterns" (so named by analogy with Westerns). It influenced not only Soviet cinema, but also the world: three remakes of "Thirteen" were subsequently filmed in the USA - "Sahara" by Zoltan Kord, "Sahara" by Brian Trenchard-Smith and "The Last of the Comanches" by Andre before Thoth.
“Dream”
The 1941 film “Dream” is an existential drama and tragicomedy dedicated to the inhabitants of the boarding school of the same name, their broken destinies, hopes and disappointments, the gulf between beautiful illusion and depressing reality. Only the main character, a young girl who left the village, has enough fortitude not to break down, but to continue moving on in search of her happiness. Faina Ranevskaya played the role of the hostess of the Rosa Skorokhod boarding house. After watching The Dream, US President Franklin Roosevelt called her a brilliant tragic actress, and the film itself was magnificent. The film "Dream" Mikhail Romm called "very personal" - it is based on his childhood memories, the characters of his relatives.
“Nine days of one year”
“Nine Days of One Year” is released in 1962 and becomes one of the most important films of the sixties. This picture tells about the work of nuclear physicists and the moral issues that they face in the course of their research. The film "Nine Days of One Year" marks the emergence of a new Soviet hero - a scientist, an intellectual. This theme is present in many works of the sixties: it was a period of a surge of interest in science, faith in reason, the search for a new aesthetics.
“Ordinary fascism”
“Ordinary Fascism” (1965) is a documentary that uses captured film archives from Nazi Germany, which, with the help of editing and musical accompaniment, becomes the author's statementdirector. A feature of the film is the off-screen voice of director Mikhail Romm himself - in contrast to the solemnity and facelessness familiar in documentary films, his voice seems human, ordinary, alive, which further emphasizes the anti-totalitarian pathos of the film. The film “Ordinary Fascism” turned out to be very successful: 25 million viewers watched it in two years.
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