Aleksandr Ivanov-Gai(1878-1926)
- Director
- Writer
Burdened with Russia's most common name (Ivanov = Jones), Aleksandr
Ivanovich Ivanov-Gai differentiated himself by the hyphenated "Gai."
Thus he should not be confused with another Russian director, Aleksandr
Gavrilovich Ivanov [qv] (1898-1984), who was not hyphenated and not
related! Ivanov-Gai initially earned his living as an ace newspaper
reporter in Moscow before and after the turn of the 20th century. In
that capitalist business, like US media reporters today, Ivanov-Gai
learned to keep on top of sensational stories whenever possible. And
when he switched from print media to film (starting at 1908 at the
Hanzhonkov Studio in Moscow), Ivanov-Gai often dealt with topical, even
spicy materials that grabbed public attention. Among his "hot topics"
were "When the Beast Awakens" ("The Third Gender") and "The Yellow
Ticket", both films dating from 1916-17. Ivanov-Gai's overall film
directing career, which lasted from 1912 ("The In-Law") to 1925 ("Wife
of the Rev-Com-Mgr"), before and after the Russian Revolution, resulted
in appx. total 30 films, 26 pre-Revolutionary, 4 post-. Of those 30,
only a very small number have been preserved. During the Soviet
(Communist) era, the reputation of pre-Communist Ivanov-Gai went into a
serious decline. He was viewed as commercial, plot-oriented, plodding
and unimaginative, not artistic or creative. And for many decades,
almost the only Gai-directed film deemed worthy of mention by Soviet
film historians seemed to be "Czar Ivan the Terrible" ('15-'16). That
exception was hardly surprising, because the film was preserved, it
starred a world-famous opera singer, Chaliapin Sr. (who had the respect
of Soviet cultural historians), and because the film derived from
classical Russian music and literature (Rimsky-Korsakov and Mei). In
Russia's post-Communist, semi-capitalist era (1992- ), it will be
interesting to see whether Ivanov-Gai's one-time standing as a highly
successful commercial film director in the pre-Communist years will
ever be restored...