Ivan Mosjoukine
Acting • Born 1889-09-26 – Died 1939-01-18
Biography
Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin, usually billed using the French transliteration Ivan Mosjoukine, was a Russian silent film actor, writer and director. Born in Kondol, in the Saratov Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Penza Oblast in Russia), Ivan Mozzhukhin was the youngest of four brothers. His mother Rachel Ivanovna Mozzhukhina (née Lastochkina) was the daughter of a Russian Orthodox priest, while his father Ilya Ivanovich Mozzhukhin came from peasants and served as an estate manager for the noble Obolensky family. While all three elder brothers finished seminary, Ivan was sent to the Penza gymnasium for boys and later studied law at the 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. 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. At the end of 1919, Mosjoukine arrived in Paris and quickly established himself as one of the top stars of the French silent cinema, starring in one successful film after another. Handsome, tall, and possessing a powerful screen presence, he won a considerable following as a mysterious and exotic romantic figure. Mosjoukine's film stardom was assured and during the 1920s, his face with the trademark hypnotic stare appeared on covers of film magazines all over Europe. He wrote the screenplays for most of his starring vehicles and directed two of them, L'Enfant du carnaval (Child of the Carnival), released on 29 August 1921 and Le Brasier ardent (The Blazing Inferno), released on 2 November 1923. The leading lady in both films was the then-"Madame Mosjoukine", Nathalie Lissenko. Brasier, in particular, was highly praised for its innovative and inventive concepts, but ultimately proved too surreal and bizarre to become financially successful. Ivan Mosjoukine died of tuberculosis in a Neuilly-sur-Seine clinic. All available sources give his age as 49 and year of birth as 1889. However, his gravestone at the Russian cemetery in the Parisian suburb of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois is inscribed with the year 1887.
Filmography
83 credits
Kuleshov Effect
Movie • 1919
And The Song Remained Unfinished
Movie • 1916
Doctor Rakitin
Vanyushin's Children
Movie • 1915
Aleksey
Nikolay Stavrogin
Movie • 1915
Nikolay Stavrogin
Me And My Conscience
Movie • 1915
Gleb Znamenskiy
L'enfant du carnaval
Movie • 1934
Ivan Mosjoukine, or the Carnival Child
Movie • 1998
Self (archive footage)
Nitchevo
Movie • 1936
The Queen's Secret
Movie • 1919
Paul, lord Verden's son
Casanova
Movie • 1934
Worker's Quarters
Movie • 1912
Surguchyov, factory's clerk
Scary Corpse
Movie • 1912
The Late Mathias Pascal
Movie • 1925
Mathias Pascal
Loves of Casanova
Movie • 1927
Casanova
Khaz-Bulat
Movie • 1913
Prince
Idols
Movie • 1915
Giu Kolman
The Lion of the Moguls
Movie • 1924
le prince Roundghito-Sing
Manolescu, the Prince of Swindlers
Movie • 1929
Manolescu
The Burning Crucible
Movie • 1923
Zed, le détective
Les Ombres Qui Passent
Movie • 1924
Louis Barclay
Chrysanthemums
Movie • 1914
Vladimir
Woman of Tomorrow
Movie • 1914
Nikolay, Anna's husband
A Narrow Escape
Movie • 1920
Octave de Granier
Beggar Woman
Movie • 1916
Poet
Satan Triumphant
Movie • 1917
Pastor Talnoks / Pastor's son Sandro
Knight's Spirit
Movie • 1918
Vladek / Stas Marzinkovskiy
Glory to Us, Death to the Enemy
Movie • 1914
Russian officer
Defence of Sevastopol
Movie • 1911
Kornilov / associate of the envoy of the Menshkov retinue
Petersburg Slums
Movie • 1915
Michel Strogoff
Movie • 1926
Michael Strogoff
The Prosecutor
Movie • 1917
Eric Olsen, prosecutor
The Peasants' Lot
Movie • 1912
Pyotr
Behind the Screen
Movie • 1917
Ivan Mosjoukine
In the Hands of Merciless Fate
Movie • 1914
Sergey Nevedov, doctor's son
Justice d'abord
Movie • 1921
The Kreutzer Sonata
Movie • 1911
Trukhachevskiy
The House of Mystery
Movie • 1923
Julien Villandrit
Cinema in Russia
Movie • 1979
Film footage
Surrender
Movie • 1927
Constantine
The White Devil
Movie • 1930
Hadschi Murat
Sergeant X
Movie • 1932
Jean Renault
The Night Before Christmas
Movie • 1913
Devil
The Adjutant of the Czar
Movie • 1929
Prince Boris Kurbski
The Secret Courier
Movie • 1928
Julien Sorel
Kean
Movie • 1924
Edmund Kean
The In-Law
Movie • 1912
Ivan
What Is Sex?
Movie • 2024
Mr. Kuleshov
Father Sergius
Movie • 1918
Prince Kasatsky, later Father Sergius
A Terrible Revenge
Movie • 1913
Petro the wizard
The Robber Brothers
Movie • 1912
Younger brother
The Queen of Spades
Movie • 1916
Hermann
The Little House in Kolomna
Movie • 1913
Hussar / Mavrusha
Life is a Moment, Art is Forever
Movie • 1916
Prince Boleslav
At Midnight in the Graveyard
Movie • 1910
Life in Death
Movie • 1914
Dr. Renaud
Alcoholism and Its Consequences
Movie • 1913
Alcoholic
Mysterious Someone
Movie • 1914
Writer
Wicked Night
Movie • 1914
Georges Vinogradov, a student
Mazepa
Movie • 1914
Mazepa
Sin
Movie • 1916
Lavrov, engineer
Her Heroic Feat
Movie • 1914
Robert
The President
Movie • 1928
Chico/Pepe Torre, ein Bauer
Member Of Parliament
Movie • 1923
Lord Chilcote / Loder, writer
The Child of the Carnival
Movie • 1921
Marquis Octave de Granier
Tempêtes
Movie • 1922
Henri
Uncle's Apartment
Movie • 1913
Koko
Little Ellie
Movie • 1918
Norton, city's mayor
Sorrows of Sarah
Movie • 1913
Isaak
In A Lively Place
Movie • 1911
The coachman
Accession of the Romanov Dynasty
Movie • 1913
The 1002nd Night
Movie • 1933
Tahar
The Dagger Woman
Movie • 1916
Sakhovskiy, the painter
Tomboy
Movie • 1914
Anatoliy, painter
Do You Remember?..
Movie • 1914
Yaron
The Tale of the Sleeping Princess and the Seven Knights
Movie • 1914
Prince Elisei
The Precipice
Movie • 1913
Rayskiy
In The Wild Blindness Of Desires
Movie • 1916
Nikolay
Dance of Death
Movie • 1917
Mark Galich, music composer
Panna Meri
Movie • 1916
Brothers
Movie • 1913
Aleksey
The Spring's Stream
Movie • 1912
Albov, the painter
The Man
Movie • 1912
Boris, Barkov's son
А счастье было так возможно
Movie • 1916