The famous Soviet actor, director, screenwriter, theater figure and film theorist Sergei Yutkevich came to the world of art as a very young child, one might say, a child, and remained in it until the very last days of his long and fruitful life. The creative path of this person was not simple and smooth, but he never turned off the chosen road.
At the dawn of creative activity
Yutkevich Sergey Iosifovich was born in St. Petersburg in 1904 (December twenty-eighth). And already in the seventeenth year, his creative life began. The Civil War tormented Russia, but, obsessed with the dream of an acting career, the teenager paid little attention to what was happening in the country and stubbornly went to his goal.
Sevastopol and Kiev can rightly call their young actor, artist, assistant director, and Kiev, their chick, as the theaters of these cities “plummeted” a potential star, it was here that the future People’s Artist of the Soviet Union received his first practical experience and honed his skills.
But practice is practice, and you can’t go far without education, and the young nugget understood this very well. In 1921, the seventeen-year-old Sergei Yutkevich entered the theater and art department of VKhUTEMAS, which he graduated in 1923. The same period dates from his studies at the State Higher Director's Workshops, led by Vsevolod Meyerhold.
Revolutionary art
The period during which the first steps of Sergey Yutkevich fell in art was characterized by rapid changes in the life of the country. Russia said goodbye to everything old and inspired to build a new one. Naturally, the revolutionary mood also affected the acting environment.
In 1922, Yutkevich S. and G. Kozintsev, with the assistance of L. Trauberg and G. Kryzhitsky, issued a manifesto under the loud name "Eccentricity", which became the theoretical foundation of FEKS (Factories of an Eccentric Actor). The purpose of the authors of the manifesto was to create a completely new, revolutionary art, which they were going to present to the world, combining different genres: pop, circus, propaganda work and theater. This was the innovation that the young Soviet state needed.
Two years later, after a loud statement, Sergey Yutkevich turned from words to action and released the film “Give the Radio!”, Which tells the story of the life of street children in the capital. In this eccentric comedy, the director tried to embody the idea of mixing genres. The electorate took the picture with enthusiasm.
And two years later, Yutkevich creates an experimental film collective and becomes its leader. The search for new forms in art continues.
Lenfilm
In 1928, Yutkevich, the director, began to "gain" authority, and he was appointed head of the First Film Studio at Lenfilm.
Having received such an important position, Sergey Iosifovich is trying to maximize his creative ideas, but it wasn’t there. The Soviet state needed films of a certain subject, and the directors did not dare to turn off the direct socialist path and realize some of their plans.
At first, Yutkevich was still trying to somehow combine his experiments with a social order (Black Sail, Lace, but for a long time he did not have enough. The films “Oncoming, ” “Golden Mountains, ” etc., shot under the direction of a young director a little later than the above, are already saturated with ideology.
For the sake of power
From time to time, Sergey Yutkevich makes attempts to break out of the cage. One of these can be called the documentary "Ankara - the heart of Turkey", where reliable factual material is effectively combined with a kind of plot. This experiment was a success for Yutkevich.
But by the middle of the thirties I had to get into liberties - a very alarming time was coming. Starting from about the thirty-fourth year, Sergei Iosifovich removes only what can and should be removed. He understands that there is time in the yard, which is completely inappropriate for creative experiments.
The paintings “Miners”, “Man with a Gun”, “Yakov Sverdlov”, etc., created in the second half of the thirties, were praised by critics and even awarded state awards. But almost did not represent artistic value. The main thing in them was Soviet ideology.
By the way, in the film "Man with a Gun" Yutkevich first touched on the theme of Lenin, which later became one of the most important in his future work.
Jack of all trades
Yutkevich Sergey was noted in the world of art not only as a director. He also proved to be a successful administrator, leading the Soyuzdetfilm studio, an authoritative teacher, an enthusiastic art historian, a talented theorist, etc., often speaking in all these forms at the same time. He even had a chance to work as a director in the Song and Dance Ensemble of the People’s Committee of Internal Affairs from 1939 to 1946.
In general, the prewar and war years were marked for Yutkevich by a surge of creative activity. He even managed to shoot several "beyond the scope" of films, including, for example, the comedy "New Adventures Schweik." During this period, the maestro was just like hot cakes. Students who were lucky enough to study in the directorial workshop of Sergei Iosifovich at VGIK, recalled that their teacher always disappeared somewhere: either on the set in France, then at some festival, then at Mosfilm. And when he appeared: elegant, fragrant - the students could not take their eyes off him. Sergey Yutkevich, whose photo is presented in this article, always had a bright, memorable appearance. Contemporaries characterized him as an elegant, cheerful and interesting person.
Black line
But after the war, a black streak began for Yutkevich. The second half of the forties is perhaps the most difficult period in the life of a filmmaker, and it began with one work on a favorite topic (about Ilyich).
We are talking about the film adaptation of Pogodin’s play “The Kremlin Chimes”, which was supposed to be released under the title “Light over Russia”.
After conducting a “tasting” of the painting, the party leadership considered that the image of Lenin was not sufficiently revealed in it, and a flurry of criticism fell upon the author. Yutkevich remembered everything, and first of all, his pre-war experiments. The director was accused of cosmopolitanism, of fawning over America and its filmmakers, called him an esthete and a formalist.
In the forty-ninth year, Sergei Iosifovich was forced to leave the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography and the All-Russian Research Institute of Art Studies and for some time move away from directing.
Return and Triumph
In 1952, Yutkevich made an attempt to return to the world of cinema by shooting the film Przhevalsky, which was far from politics, which was a biography of the famous researcher. But the director finally succeeds in recovering on Olympus only after the death of Stalin. And from the mid-fifties his life again was full of creativity and popular recognition.
The film "The Great Warrior of Albania Skanderberg" receives an award in Cannes. The maestro does not forget about the theater. He returns to VGIK and tirelessly pleases the viewer with his new productions. Literally over the next ten years, “from his pen” comes out about thirty performances. The most striking of these critics call the productions of “Bath”, “Bedbug”, “Career of Arturo Wu”, etc.
Yutkevich actively travels abroad, he is warmly received in France, introduced to the jury of the Cannes Film Festival and even given the post of vice president of national cinematics.
Together with the French, Sergey Iosifovich makes the film “The plot for a short story” about Chekhov’s personal life. The picture is very popular among European viewers, in the Soviet Union it was not popular.
Lenin
As noted above, one of the main topics in the work of Sergei Yutkevich was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. It was difficult to assume that the director would turn to this person again after the film “Light over Russia”, which brought him so many troubles. Nevertheless, Yutkevich makes the film "Tales of Lenin." In it, he actually elevates Ilyich to the podium of a saint, well, or at least the most honest, kind and decent person on Earth.
The next work devoted to the leader of the proletariat was the painting "Lenin in Poland", an adaptation of 1965. She brought Yutkevich great success and objectively is one of the best in his collection. Here, the master finally manages to fully satisfy his long-standing craving for experiments. The film received the Cannes Film Festival award, as well as the USSR State Prize.
And another picture was shot by Yutkevich about Ilyich. It is called "Lenin in Paris", the release date is 1981. It can be called the last significant work of Sergei Iosifovich. The film also received the USSR State Prize, but critics call it, to put it mildly, unsuccessful and unreasonable in terms of artistic value.
At the finish line
Sergei Yutkevich, who began his career as a teenager, did not leave him until the last days of his life. In the eighty-second year, he still worked at the Moscow Musical Chamber Theater, where he staged plays by A. Blok “The Stranger” and “The Fairy Tale”. In addition, the maestro continued to “sculpt” shots for the world of theater and cinema at VGIK, wrote books and even edited the “Cinematic Dictionary”.
