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.
2024
as Mr. Kuleshov
1998
as Self (archive footage)
1979
as Film footage
1936
1934
1934
1933
as Tahar
1932
as Jean Renault
1930
as Hadschi Murat
1929
as Manolescu
1929
as Prince Boris Kurbski
1928
as Julien Sorel
1928
as Chico/Pepe Torre, ein Bauer
1927
as Casanova
1927
as Constantine
1926
as Michael Strogoff
1925
as Mathias Pascal
1924
as le prince Roundghito-Sing
1924
as Louis Barclay
1924
as Edmund Kean
1923
as Zed, le détective
1923
as Lord Chilcote / Loder, writer
1923
as Julien Villandrit
1922
as Henri
1921
as Marquis Octave de Granier
1921
1920
as Octave de Granier
1919
as Paul, lord Verden's son
1919
1918
as Prince Kasatsky, later Father Sergius
1918
as Vladek / Stas Marzinkovskiy
1918
as Norton, city's mayor
1917
as Pastor Talnoks / Pastor's son Sandro
1917
as Ivan Mosjoukine
1917
as Eric Olsen, prosecutor
1917
as Mark Galich, music composer
1916
as Poet
1916
1916
as Lavrov, engineer
1916
as Doctor Rakitin
1916
as Sakhovskiy, the painter
1916
as Prince Boleslav
1916
as Hermann
1916
as Nikolay
1915
as Gleb Znamenskiy
1915
as Nikolay Stavrogin
1915
as Aleksey
1915
as Giu Kolman
1915
1914
as Mazepa
1914
as Prince Elisei
1914
as Yaron
1914
as Sergey Nevedov, doctor's son
1914
as Georges Vinogradov, a student
1914
as Writer
1914
as Vladimir
1914
as Russian officer
1914
as Dr. Renaud
1914
as Anatoliy, painter
1914
as Robert
1914
as Nikolay, Anna's husband
1913
as Prince
1913
as Devil
1913
as Aleksey
1913
as Hussar / Mavrusha
1913
as Rayskiy
1913
as Isaak
1913
as Koko
1913
1913
as Petro the wizard
1913
as Alcoholic
1912
as Pyotr
1912
as Boris, Barkov's son
1912
as Albov, the painter
1912
as Ivan
1912
as Surguchyov, factory's clerk
1912
1912
as Younger brother
1911
as Kornilov / associate of the envoy of the Menshkov retinue
1911
as The coachman
1911
as Trukhachevskiy
1910