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Ivan Pyryev

Ivan Pyryev

Directing

Biography

Ivan Aleksandrovich Pyryev (17 November 1901 – 7 February 1968) was a Soviet-Russian film director and screenwriter remembered as the high priest of Stalinist cinema. He was awarded six Stalin Prizes (1941, 1942, 1946, 1946, 1948, 1951), served as Director of the Mosfilm studios (1954–57) and was, for a time, the most influential man in the Soviet motion picture industry. Pyryev was born in Kamen-na-Obi, in the Tomsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Altai Krai, Russia). His early career included acting on stage directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold in The Forest and by Sergei Eisenstein in the Proletcult Theatre production The Mexican. Pyryev also acted in Eisenstein's first short film Glumov's Diary. Pyryev's early career included production jobs behind the camera, such as work for director Yuri Tarich. He débuted as a director in the age of silent film, with Strange Woman (1929). During the 1930s and 1940s Pyryev rivaled Grigori Aleksandrov as the country's most successful director of musical comedies, all of which starred his wife Marina Ladynina. Even during wartime, when the Soviet film industry had been evacuated to Alma-Ata, Pyryev made popular and light-hearted features. In Six O'Clock after the War is Over the Romantic characters (played by Ladynina and Yevgeny Samoilov), when separated by war, arrange a date at 6 PM on the Victory Day, and the victory celebrations are shown towards the end of the film (which was released in November 1944).

Known For

Wings of a Serf
5.0

This SovKino production was a major early experiment in Soviet historical film about the oprichnina period of Muscovite history, combining the costumed drama and Gothic thrills of the genre with historical materialist commentary on the dialectical collision of scientific progress and patriarchal religious tyranny under Tsar Ivan the Terrible. It follows a self-taught inventor from the serf class Nikishka, whose efforts to build a flying machine incite accusations of witchcraft. Nikishka and his beloved Fima are persecuted by the feudal lord Kurlyatev, who took their village in a petty land squabble. They’re rescued when Kurlyatev’s lands are taken by the Tsar in his autocratic campaign against the feudal system. Ivan puts Nikishka to work in his linen mill, where the young serf is coveted by Tsarina Maria Temryukovna, who the Tsar’s been ignoring in favor of his cupbearer Feodor. A series of harrowing intrigues wind a bloody dance through bedchamber, feast hall, cathedral and dungeon.

Wings of a Serf

1926Movie
Friendship Triumphs
10.0

Film about the third 'Weltfestspiele der Jugend und Studenten für den Frieden' in East Berlin, 1951. West Germany is represented as a degenerate country which has been occupied by the Americans and is still inclined to fascism. We see the construction of the stadium, the departure and arrival of the delegations, the opening and closing by Enrico Berlinguer, a sports event, the parade of the delegations, a visit to Potsdam, folk dancing, and police violence against youngsters from West Berlin who want to visit East Germany because of the games. The film is interlaced with shots from the Korean War and a parade by NATO-troops in West Germany. Featuring Robert Montgomery, Konrad Adenauer, Wilhelm Pieck, Dwight Eisenhower, Robert Leer and Erich Honecker. The crew comprised no less than 24 cameramen. This project was the first great colour film Ivens co-operated in.

Friendship Triumphs

1951Movie