Moskvin, Andrei

MOSKVIN, Andrei

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Cinematographer. Nationality: Russian. Born: Andrei Nikolaievich Moskvin in St. Petersburg, 14 February 1901. Career: 1922—co-founder, with Kozintsev, Trauberg, and Yutkevich, FEKS, and worked as cinematographer for these directors as well as for Eisenstein. Awards: Stalin Prize, 1946, 1948. Died: In Leningrad, 28 February 1961.

Films as Cinematographer:

1926

Deviatoe yanvaria (Ninth of January ) (Viskovsky) (co); Shinel (The Cloak ) (Kozintsev and Trauberg); Katka bumazhnyi ranet (Katka's Reinette Apples ) (Johanson and Ermler) (co); Chyortovo koleso (The Devil's Wheel ) (Kozintsev and Trauberg)

1927

Bratichka (Little Brother ) (Kozintsev and Trauberg); S.V.D. (Soyuz Velikogo Dela ; The Club of the Big Deed ) (Kozintsev and Trauberg); Turbina nr. 3 (Turbine no. 3 ) (Timoshenko) (co); Pobediteli nochi (Victory of the Night ) (Timoshenko) (co); Lektro (Electra ) (Timoshenko) (co); Soikina lyubov (Soikin's Love ) (Timoshenko) (co); Chuzhoy pidzhak (Ships ) (co)

1929

Novyi Vavilon (The New Babylon ) (Kozintsev and Trauberg) (co)

1931

Odna (Alone ) (Kozintsev and Trauberg); Gopak (Chakanovsky—short)

1932

Hayl-Moskau (Schmidgof) (co)

1935

Yunost Maksima (The Youth of Maxim ) (Kozintsev and Trauberg)

1937

Vozvrashcheniye Maksima (The Return of Maxim ) (Kozintsev and Trauberg)

1939

Vyborgskaya storona (New Horizons ; The Vyborg Side ) (Kozintsev and Trauberg) (co)

1943

Aktrisa (The Actress ) (Trauberg)

1944

Ivan Grozny (Ivan the Terrible, Part I ) (Eisenstein) (co)

1947

Pirogov (Kozintsev) (co)

1953

Belinsky (Kozintsev); Nad Nemanom rassvet (Fainzimmer)

1955

Ovod (The Gadfly ) (Fainzimmer)

1956

Prostiye lyudi (Simple People ) (Kozintsev and Traubert—produced in 1946) (co)

1957

Don Quixote (Kozintsev) (co); Rasskazi o Lenine (Stories about Lenin ) (Yutkevich)

1958

Ivan Grozny II: Boyarskii Zagovor (Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyars' Plot ) (Eisenstein—produced in 1946)

1960

Dama s sobachkoy (The Lady with the Dog ) (Heifitz) (co)

1963

Hamlet (Kozintsev) (co)

Publications

On MOSKVIN: articles—

Focus on Film, no. 13, 1973.

Iskusstvo Kino (Moscow), August 1996.

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Andrei Moskvin was one of the most gifted of Soviet cinematographers. A few years younger than Edward Tisse, he did not have Tisse's background in newsreel photography, but he was fortunate in being able to work with the leading Soviet directors and, for the Kozintsev films, with the art director Yevgeni Enei, who was a perfect collaborator. Most of Moskvin's films were directed by Kozintsev and Trauberg, but even as early as 1927 he was a master of light and dark contrasts and highlighting in The Club of the Big Deed. Using Enei's fantastic sets in The New Babylon, his studio photography glittered to match the sardonic mood of the film, and in Alone he experimented with a narrow range of white tones. The Maxim trilogy (The Youth of Maxim, The Return of Maxim, and The Vyborg Side ) made in the late 1930s is possibly the best work he did with Kozintsev and Trauberg. The careful selection of images as seen through Maxim's eyes (particularly in the first film) avoid virtuosity or artiness, but the films nevertheless take on a complete reality and mood of growing awareness and growth. But inevitably Moskvin is probably most famous for his work on Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible, Part I and Part II. The ornate pictorial compositions of Part I are masterful, and the climax, the "true coronation" by the people of Ivan, brilliantly fits Eisenstein's thematic movement. Part II, for which Tisse himself filmed the exteriors, works boldly with a mixture of black-and-white interiors and color exterior sequences, culminating in the cathedral climax. Moskvin's last completed film was the masterpiece The Lady with the Dog, revealing his complete authoriy and control. He died while filming Kozintsev's Hamlet.