Ivan Mozjoukhine

Nicknamed the Russian Rudolph Valentino, Ivan Ilitch Mozjoukhine is a Russian actor and director naturalized French in the 1920s. He is the most prominent actor in pre-Revolution Russian cinema, notably with Father Serge. He then became one of the members of the film community of white Russians who emigrated to France after the October Revolution, and one of the most prominent actors in French silent cinema.

Son of a cultivated gentry family, he was born on his father's property, in the village of Serguievskoïe, near Penza. His family loved the dramatic arts (his older brother Alexander later became a famous opera singer), and from childhood he did amateur theater, notably at the popular theater in Penza. After graduating from high school, he spent two years at the Moscow Law School to obey his father before deciding to become an actor. Breaking with his family, he fled to Kiev, performed in various provincial theaters, then in the troupe of the Vvedensky People's Theater in Moscow. It was there that he was noticed by the filmmaker Piotr Tchardynine.

In 1911, he began to act in the cinema for the producer Alexander Khanjonkov and quickly achieved success thanks to his elegance and his acting qualities in the most varied roles, both tragic and comic. Among his most outstanding roles, we can note the violinist Trukhachevsky in The Sonata à Kreutzer (1911), Admiral Kornilov in The Defense of Sebastopol (1911), Mavrouchka in The Little House of Kolomna by Tchardynin (1913), the Devil in Starevich's Christmas Night. After the arrival at Khanjonkov of director Yevgeny Bauer, Mozjoukhine becomes the greatest star of Russian cinema.

Thus in Jizn v smerti (Life in Death), Mozjoukhine, shedding tears (the famous tears of Mozjoukhine), becomes a legend of silent cinema of the time. This film, released in 1914, based on a screenplay by Valéri Brioussov and directed by Yevgeny Bauer, tells the story of Doctor Renault (played by Mozjoukhine) who kills his wife to preserve her beauty eternally and to embalm her. It was after this film that he began his collaboration with the studio-studio of Joseph Ermoliev and Protazanov. With the latter, he plays Hermann in La Dame de Pique (1916) and many other classics of Russian cinema. He reached the peak of his art in the role of Prince Kassatsky in Le Père Serge by Protazanov (1918). He also performed in parallel at the Korch Drama Theater in Moscow.

Lev Kulechov would later use extracts from Mozjoukhine's films to demonstrate his ideas on the psychological editing of films, known today as the Kulechov effect.

With the revolution, the producer Ermoliev moved his studios to Yalta, in Crimea, then held by the White Armies and continued to shoot there until 1920. But, quickly, the situation also deteriorated in Yalta. In February 1920, Ermoliev and all his troop (Mozjoukhine, his partner Nathalie Lissenko, the directors Alexandre Volkoff, Protazanov and Tourjansky, the latter's wife Nathalie Kovanko) emigrated to France via Constantinople on the Greek merchant ship "the Panther". During the trip, the team shoots a film that will be released under the title L'Angoissante Aventure.

Based in Montreuil near Paris, in the former premises of Pathé, Joseph Ermoliev's studio soon changed its name to become “the Albatros”, with Mozjoukhine as the main star. Mozjoukhine also wrote the screenplay for L'Enfant du Carnaval, and became a director for Le Brasier ardent (1923), an astonishing film that mixes avant-garde, comedy and derision, and in which he plays a role with multiple characters.

The following years saw him turn a series of great roles which made him the undisputed star of French silent cinema: Kean (1924) by Alexandre Volkoff which is an adaptation of the play by Alexandre Dumas on the great English actor, the same year, Les Ombres qui passent, another film by Alexandre Volkoff and which alternates comedy (à la Buster Keaton) and tragedy, Le Lion des Mogols by Jean Epstein, and with Marcel L'Herbier Feu Mathias Pascal after Pirandello, who offers him another golden role (and in which he has the young Michel Simon as a partner).

After this series of films, he left Albatros to shoot major productions for the Société des Cinéromans such as Tourjansky's Michel Strogoff (1926), then Alexandre Volkoff's Casanova (1927). He had been approached to play the Napoleon of his friend Abel Gance, but finally left the role to Albert Dieudonné. A Parisian figure of the Roaring Twenties, he lived at the Hôtel Napoléon and frequented the Montparnasse district, at La Coupole or at the Closerie des Lilas, but he also went out on the right bank at Chez Schéhérazade, the Russian cabaret. He meets the muse Kiki de Montparnasse with whom he has a romance.

In the spring of 1926, Mozjoukhine signed a contract with Universal Pictures and left for Hollywood. In the United States, under pressure from producers, he had to shorten his name to "John Moskin" and undergo an unfortunate cosmetic surgery which deprived his features of their expressive power. He only shot one film, L'Otage (Surrender), which was a failure, and returned to Europe.

From 1928 to 1930, he was in Germany where he played in particular the role of Hadji Murat in the White Devil (Der weiße Teufel, 1930) under the direction of Alexandre Volkoff, then returned to Paris. The arrival of speaking caused the end of his acting career, due to a very pronounced Russian accent. His only successful speaking role is that of Sergeant X of Vladimir Strijevsky. He still lives in a hotel and often changes apartments according to his fortune. By sending parcels, he helps his old father who remained in Penza and his first companion, Olga Téléguine-Bronitsky, a theater actress fallen into poverty with whom he had had a son in 1909 (Alexander, known as Chourik), who remained in Moscow. After a last small role in 1936, he ended his life in loneliness and misery and died of tuberculosis at the Saint-Pierre clinic in Neuilly.

Romain Gary liked to make people believe that Ivan was his father.