Lenin in the cinema: Which of the actors was the most convincing in the role of the leader of the proletariat

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

In world cinema, there are roles that have been played by dozens of actors. Lenin became one of the most popular images of Russian films, while actor's interpretations have changed significantly over the century. Whose reincarnation turned out to be the most original and successful - it's up to you to judge.

During the Soviet era, a lot of films were shot about Lenin, while the opportunity to play the leader of the proletariat was considered a sign of special trust and honor. On the one hand, playing Lenin was a great success - this role could open up great prospects for any actor and bring awards and prizes, and on the other hand, there was a danger of getting stuck in one role for a long time and not getting other roles (Lenin could not in the next film appear, for example, in the form of a recidivist thief!). The first to play Lenin was an unprofessional actor - a simple worker Vasily Nikandrov in the 1927 film "October", who was invited to this role solely because of the external resemblance.

One of the first professional actors to play Lenin was Boris Shchukin - the one after whom one of the most famous theater schools was named. He played the role of the leader in the films of 1937-1939, while he was faced with a difficult task: to make sure that Stalin's personality did not fade against the background of the image he created. These shootings severely undermined the artist's health.

Maxim Strauch went down in the history of Soviet cinema primarily as an actor who played Lenin in several films of the 1930-1960s. They say that his Leniniana stretched out for 30 years due to the fact that Nadezhda Krupskaya liked his Ilyich. Maxim Strauch was awarded the prize for a peculiar, impressive and deep human embodiment of the image of Lenin at the XI International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary. But this success had a downside: the actor became a hostage to one role, and the audience simply did not remember his other works and did not recognize Strauch without makeup.

In 6 films of the 1950-1960s. Lenin was played by Boris Smirnov, who was called "the main Lenin of the country" because of his incredible portrait resemblance. The actor even gave master classes at all-Union seminars to improve the skills of provincial actors playing Lenin.

The leader's namesake, Mikhail Ulyanov, often got the role of Marshal Zhukov, but he also played Lenin. In this image, he appeared in 3 films of the 1960-1970s. After that, the actor received many letters from viewers who asked him not to accept the role of negative characters - once having played Lenin, according to moviegoers, he simply lost the right to portray villains on screens.

The record holder for the number of Lenin's roles was the People's Artist of Russia Yuri Kayurov - in the 1960s-1980s. he played the leader 18 times! On the set of the film "The Sixth of July" a funny incident happened to him. Filmed in a mansion that was once occupied by the Left Social Revolutionaries, and then a kindergarten was placed there. During the break, the actor in makeup sat down on the porch to rest, and at this time the teacher took the children for a walk. One of them approached Kayurov and said with surprise: "" (and pointed towards Red Square). The actor was not taken aback: "".

Dozens of actors applied for the role of Lenin, but for many, these attempts ended at the screen test stage. At the same time, the last word was not even for the director. Kirill Stolyarov talked about his auditions for the film "The Ulyanov Family" (1957): "".

Kirill Lavrov played Lenin three times in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1985 g.in the image of the leader of the world proletariat, the audience saw Innokentiy Smoktunovsky. Critics wrote that no one had played Lenin like that before - without antics and deliberate burriness, creating the image of a thoughtful and serious politician who is difficult to imagine with a log at a subbotnik.

Few know that Andrei Myagkov, the people's favorite, was twice reincarnated as the leader of the proletariat - he played the young Ilyich in the film "Hope", 1973, and later his hero in Gaidai's comedy "Good weather on Deribasovskaya …", 1992, made up Lenin. For a long time, the actor refused to play Lenin in the performances of the Moscow Art Theater, but the director Mark Donskoy managed to convince him to play Ilyich in the cinema. Myagkov gave his consent only after the director assured him that it would be necessary to play not a historical character, but a young man in love. And in the early 1990s. he became one of the first actors to portray a parody of the leader in a comedy on the screens.

In 1992, in the image of Lenin, viewers saw Viktor Sukhorukov, who in the "Strict Security Comedy" played the role of a prisoner in a colony, who played the leader in a play dedicated to the anniversary of the revolution and unexpectedly revealed his spiritual kinship with him. The actor said that it was a grotesque comedy and "".

In the new century, directors returned to this topic and tried to rethink it in a new way. In the year of the centenary of the revolution, two films were released in which Lenin was played by the leading actors of our time - Yevgeny Mironov and Yevgeny Stychkin. Mironov played the leader in the series "The Demon of the Revolution", the creators of which tried to demythologize the image of Ilyich, presenting him as an ordinary person with his weaknesses and passions. Many criticized the creators of the series for the inaccuracy of the interpretation of historical events and the distortion of the image of the leader, and Mironov explained: "".

In the series "Trotsky" Lenin was played by Evgeny Stychkin. His Ilyich is called the most unpleasant character among all the interpretations of this image in the history of cinema: in his performance, he looks nervous, power-hungry, vain, cruel and treating his teammates in the game like pieces on a chessboard. One of the directors of the series, Alexander Kott, said: "".

Cinema interpretations and one more famous historical character are also interesting. Hitlers of world cinema: which of the actors looked the most convincing in the role of the Fuhrer.