Jan Fried - the master who gave us cinema

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:53

This man made a variety of films from feature films to documentaries, mostly from his own scripts. But his calling card was musical pictures and operettas adapted for the wide screen. So, get acquainted - Jan Fried - director and screenwriter. For several decades, his paintings have been an integral part of Russian cinema, like the comedies of Eldar Ryazanov and Leonid Gaidai. After watching any of them today, I want to review it tomorrow.

Biography

Yan Borisovich Frid (birth name Yakov Borukhovich Fridland) was born on the last day of May 1908 in Krasnoyarsk.

He started working at the age of 13 as a brother of mercy in the military hospitals of his native city. In parallel with this, young Jan Fried studied at the workers' faculty. He worked in Barnaul as the head of a drama circle, and in Vladivostok he directed theater workshops. For two years he was the artistic director of TRAM inNovosibirsk, then in Leningrad as a director. From a very young age, his life was filled with working days and a huge number of impressions.

At the age of 23, he received a diploma from the Leningrad Theater Institute (directing department). And at the age of 30 he graduated from the directing department of VGIK, where Eisenstein himself was his mentor. A year later he was already teaching at the Leningrad Conservatory. In 1966 he became a professor at VGIK. Jan Fried went through the whole war all the way to Berlin.

How it all started

The young director made his debut in Chekhov's "Surgery". In this comedy, the figures of Soviet cinema were filmed: Merkuriev, Ilyinsky, Moskvin. Only a decade and a half passed, and Fried swung at Shakespeare. He made a strategically correct decision to film one of his plays - "Twelfth Night". The director invited a young but very talented actress Clara Luchko to play the main role. For her, it was a kind of film experience, because this time she had to play two roles - the twins Sebastian and Viola.

This film has become one of the most successful and truly, kindly funny adaptations of Shakespeare's works, which had a worldwide success. The cast was truly magnificent: Alla Larionova, Vasily Merkuriev, Mikhail Yanshin. Georgy Vitsin performed in this picture one of his best roles in acting biography.

Mid-twentieth century

During this period of his life, Jan Fried is working on films that are dedicated to the modern realities of life: "Spring Troubles", "The Road of Truth"other. Until the very beginning of the seventies, he made films on various topics, but then he settled exclusively on the musical film genre. The first film he directed was "Farewell to Petersburg", which tells about Johann Strauss, the son, who came to Russia for some time.

Masterpiece Master

Yes, Jan Fried was a great director. His filmography is almost limitless, each picture is like a small masterpiece. The director himself was a very gentle, kind and intelligent person. He, like no one else, knew how to work with the most diverse actors: young and venerable, inexperienced and professionals, with a difficult character and easily following the master's proposals.

Yan Borisovich was very warm to the actors with whom he worked. He loved and respected them. I tried to create for them the most comfortable conditions for the filming process. Fried perfectly understood: the better he arranges everything during the filming period, the more efficiently all the actors will work and the better the final result will be. Thanks to this correct approach, everything turned out perfectly. It is not for nothing that famous artists of Soviet cinema were filmed by him very often.

Vitaly Solomin played in "Silva" and "The Bat", Vasily Merkuriev in "Farewell to St. Petersburg", "Twelfth Night", Margarita Terekhova and Nikolai Karachentsev perfectly embodied the images in "Pious March" and "Dog in the Manger" ". But the set of the musical film "Free Wind" turned out to be fateful for one of the actresses who played in it. TatyanaIt was while working on the picture that Dogileva met a man who a little later became her husband. It was the screenwriter of the film Mikhail Mishin.

A galaxy of stars in a new reading

From the time of his first film, Fried Yan Borisovich tried to work exclusively with Soviet theater and film actors, who were always ahead of the rest. He gave them completely new opportunities in the realization of their creativity. Fried had a true calling to discover talent. After all, it was he who launched the now-famous Anna Samokhina into the orbit of Soviet cinema, to whom he offered the role of Maritana in Don Cesar de Bazan, Natalya Tenyakova - the very woman Shura from Love and Pigeons. Lyudmila Gurchenko and Nikolai Rybnikov first appeared on the big screen in his film The Road of Truth. Such a list can be made almost endlessly: Bruno Freindlich (father of the same Alisa Freindlich from Office Romance), Nina Urgant (nurse from Belorussky Station), Alla Larionova, the beauty of films of the mid-twentieth century, Mikhail Yanshin.

Fried Yan is the director of a huge number of magnificent Soviet films. He always tried to put together amazing acting teams on the set of his films. The director himself treated them with great respect and love, easily and sincerely “forced” them to respect and love them. Yan Borisovich could expand the skills and talents of the actors so much that everyone who saw the result was surprised and amazed.

In "Silva" we see Ivar Kalnynsh, Nina Alisova, Pavel Kadochnikov completely different. The operetta "The Bat" - an unforgettable duet of the Solomin brothers; surprisingly light Larisa Udovichenko, refined Lyudmila Maksakova, cute and funny Alexander Demyanenko appeared here. From the classic work of Tirso de Molina, Fried created what was later called the musical - “Pious Martha”. He also invited only his favorites there: Margarita Terekhova, Nikolai Karachentsev, Emanuil Vitorgan, Pavel Kadochnikov.

The director's last film was "Tartuffe", which he shot at a very respectable age (85 years). The music for his paintings, which became instant air hits on television and radio, came from the pen of Gennady Gladkov.

Vivat, king, vivat

The life of the great director was amazing and long. It contained the history of a great country: from the Civil War to the Great Patriotic War, from the birth of the Leningrad film school to its luxurious development. Fried taught and directed for 64 years.

Jan Fried, whose biography is respected by anyone who read it, in the early nineties of the last century, with his other half, actress Victoria Gorshenina, moved to Germany, to the city of Stuttgart. Victoria Gorshenina, by the way, also starred in his films: the viscountess in Don Cesar de Bazan, Countess Ekenberg in Silva, Madame Pernel in Tartuffe.

The director's life ended on December 19, 2003. His wife survived him by almost eleven years.