Video: A short life path and the incredible popularity of the first Russian movie star - Vera Kholodnaya
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
No one could have imagined that Vera Levchenko from Poltava would become a famous film star, the first super popular the star of Russian silent cinema … When Vera was about to enter the ballet school, her mother called her "Poltava dumplings" and did not believe that she could be successful on stage. The directors did not see her outstanding abilities. Despite all doubts Vera Cold She achieved success in her short life path - only 26 years, of which only 4 years she acted in films - managed to become famous throughout the country.
The exact number of films in which she played is not known - according to various sources, from 50 to 80. Only 5 of them have come down to us, because the Bolsheviks destroyed all the rest, like hundreds of other popular pre-revolutionary films. They were considered the apogee of vulgarity and an example of the lack of ideology of bourgeois art.
She was 2, 5 years old when the premiere of the first film of the Lumiere brothers - "The Arrival of the Train" took place in Paris. The age of cinema began. But in her youth, Vera Levchenko dreamed of something else - she wanted to become a ballerina. She managed to enter the ballet school, but she studied there for only a year - at the insistence of her grandmother, who believed that decent girls had no place in the theater, she had to leave.
She became interested in cinema a little later. At the age of 17, she married a law student Vladimir Kholodny, took his last name. She will already become known as Vera Cold. She went to the first tests in 1914, then she was not approved. Later she was given a cameo role in Anna Karenina - the director believed that this was her maximum, since he did not see her talent.
At the same time, director Yevgeny Bauer was looking for a beautiful actress for his melodrama "A Song of Triumphant Love", while he was not very interested in having professional abilities and filming experience. So Vera Holodnaya found her director, who turned her into a real star.
Surprisingly, but during the First World War, salon melodramas enjoyed incredible success. Uncomplicated stories about criminal love, fatal passion, betrayal, murders based on jealousy, etc., etc., gathered in cinemas full halls. The titles of the films speak for themselves: "Flame of the Sky", "Mirages", "Love of the Countess", "Life for Life", "Forget about the fireplace, the lights are out in it", "Be quiet, sadness, be silent", "The Fire Devil", "The Woman Who Invented Love", "The Last Tango".
None of the actresses have enjoyed such incredible popularity. Huge queues lined up in cinemas, in Kharkov, during such a pandemonium, windows were knocked out and doors were ripped off their hinges. The title of "screen queen" was assigned to the actress. Films with her participation were shown in Europe, America, Japan, Turkey, in Germany she was offered to sign a contract for 10 years, but she did not want to leave anywhere.
In 1918, she came to Odessa for shooting, she had to stay there: the city was occupied, the government was constantly changing. In 1919, she fell ill with the "Spanish flu" - a viral flu, from which about 6 million people died in Europe that year, and died suddenly after 9 days. She was only 26 years old. Theories were also put forward that she was poisoned, but they did not find confirmation.
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