The unbelievable fate of the first Soviet film storyteller: Why Alexander Rowe couldn't make children's films for 10 years

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

44 years ago, passed away Soviet director, author of famous movie fairy tales Alexander Rowe … More than one generation of children grew up on his magical films "Koschey the Immortal", "Mary the Craftsman", "The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors", "Frost", "Fire, Water and Copper Pipes", "Barbarian Beauty, Long Braid", "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”, etc. Unfortunately, the director, who created the best films for children, did not have his own children, and his life was not at all like a fairy tale, although there were plenty of fantastic twists and turns in it.

Few fans of the director, who poeticized Slavic folklore in cinema, know that by its origin he had nothing to do with Slavic culture. His father was an Irish engineer who arrived in the early twentieth century. to Russia under a contract in order to establish a flour-grinding industry. In Yuryevets, he had an affair with the Greek woman Julia Karageorgy, and the couple had a son, Alexander. When the First World War began, his father left his family and returned to Ireland, while his son remained in Russia and always considered himself Russian.

His mother was often sick, and from the age of 10, Alexander had to earn money selling matches and combs. While still at school, he became interested in theater and began to study in an amateur art circle. Since then, Rowe has never dreamed of another profession. First, he became an assistant director Yakov Protazanov, on whose advice he graduated from the Drama College. M. Ermolova, and then he himself began to shoot films.

The fairy tale film became the only genre for Rowe in which ideological overtones could be avoided. He saw his tasks in something completely different: "".

From the very first film "By the Pike's Command" the director formed his own team, with which he worked for more than a dozen years. According to the operator Leonid Akimov, Alexander Row has "". Actor Georgy Millyar became not only a permanent member of his team, but his friend. Thanks to Rowe, Millyar began to be called the deserved Baba Yaga of Soviet cinema - it was in this role that he most impressed young and adult viewers. Sometimes in one film he got 2-3 images at once.

Alexander Rowe was called the country's first film storyteller, and there were good reasons for this. In many ways, he was a pioneer - having abandoned hand-drawn animation in children's films, he put all the creative tasks on the shoulders of the actors. The special effects in his works were amazing at that time: a self-propelled stove, buckets of water themselves, folding firewood, etc. By his order, a magic stove was created by Moscow engineers, inside it there was a place for a driver and a pyrotechnic device so that the stove would release clouds of steam … In a toy workshop in Zagorsk, at his request, they made an 11-meter Serpent Gorynych for the fairy tale "Vasilisa the Beautiful". A whole team of 20 people had to set it in motion.

Rowe's tales enjoyed great success not only in the USSR, but also abroad. In the USA, "Mary the Skillful" and "Morozko" were successfully released, and Steven Spielberg spoke of the Soviet director with admiration: "".

However, before achieving such impressive success, the director had to face serious difficulties. For 10 years he was deprived of the opportunity to make films - in the late 1940s. the fairy tale was considered too light a genre, without ideology and not reflecting the life of the Soviet people, and Rowe's departure from social and political topics caused discontent among film officials. For some time, the director filmed documentaries, worked at the Yerevan Film Studio, and only in 1955 he was able to return to Moscow and again do his favorite thing - children's cinema.

But even the best films of Rowe displeased the management: for "Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors" the director was severely reprimanded due to the fact that negative characters were played by the brightest actors, and as a result the forces of evil looked more attractive than the forces of good. He achieved recognition only in the second half of the 1960s, when his film Morozko won the main prize at the Venice Film Festival, and in 1968 he was awarded the title of People's Artist of the RSFSR.

Failures long pursued the director in his personal life. Twice he tried to build relationships with actresses, but these unions were not durable. He managed to find family happiness only on the third attempt. His wife became a faithful helper for him, but they never became parents. On December 28, 1973, at the age of 68, Alexander Rowe died, never realizing his dream of showing famous fairy-tale films to his own children.

The fate of the most beloved actor Alexander Rowe also developed dramatically: Georgy Millyar - Honored Baba Yaga and a lonely gentleman of Soviet cinema.