1885-1965
Silent era Russian/Soviet cinematographer Aleksandry Levitsky was born on this day in some location in Imperial Russia. Though he has one acting credit and one editing credit (he most certainly had more these that are not currently available via research!), all of the rest of his credits come as a cinematographer. He worked in film before, during, and after the Russian Revolution of 1917. His first turn at cimematography came on the film 1812, made in 1912. At 48 minutes long, it is one of the earliest feature length films in the history of cinema, not just early Russian motion pictures; and it had three different directors: Vasili Goncharov, Kai Hansen and Aleksandr Uralsky. As the title indicates, the film is set in 1812 and a historical drama about Napoleon's invasion of Russian that year. He next photographed the rather famous Russian short Departure of the Grand Old Man [Ukhod velikovo startza] (1912), which not only was co-directed by a woman--Elizaveta Thiman (her only film credit that we know of)--it also features film footage of Leo Tolstoy from documentary footage shot of him by an entirely different filmmaker (Alexander Drankov as "A. Drankov"). The film is actually "about" Tolstoy in a fictionalized account of the end of his life. It would have been relegated to complete obscurity if Tolstoy's widow had not threatened several times to bring legal action for libel against the filmmakers for their portrayal of her as a "let them eat cake" sort. This occasioned it's being banned in Russia upon it's release, which apparently satisfied her and no suit was ever brought. Tolstoy was played by Vladimir Shaternikov (who it seems made a minor career out of playing Tolstoy), Thiman had a role--but Tolstoy's widow was played by a name many will know: Olga Petrova. He then became the priciple cinematographer for director Yakov Protazanov (co-director of Grand Old Man) after the the film was finished. He was also the main cinematographer for director/actor Vladimir Gardin. He was the director of photography on Gardin's Tolstoy adaptation War and Peace in 1915, which Gardin both adapted and starred in himself. His first film outside the realm of this group of people came with his work with directors Vsevolod Meyerhold (a theater man who was later executed by Stalin's regime) and Mikhail Doronin on their short adaptation of Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Grey (Portret Doryana Greya) in 1915--it is one of major Russian works that is greatly lamented as lost today because of Meyerhold's involvement. He next worked with director Nikolai Larin on the experimental and philosophical short Likho odnoglazoe in early 1916. By this time, there was renewed political intensity in the country; a reuptake of political action that had first become a movement in 1905. The result was that Levitsky would not shoot another film until the following May, when it was clear which way the winds were blowing, with political change already under way. That film was Great Days of the Russian Revolution, a film taking a highly nostalgic tone of the 1905 revolution; it would be one of only two films that he shot that year. He managed to work on three films in the unrestful year of 1918--though not until very late in the year, including the aptly named Uprising (November 1918 [Julian calendar]) featuring Boris Afonin as a courageous Bolshevik soldier. In 1919, he was back again working for Gardin on The Iron Heel, based on the Jack London novel and Levitsky's only film of that year. In the new decade of the 1920's he worked on ten films between 1920 and 1928. Most of these were highly idealogical in nature and bore a stark, almost schizoid, difference from his earlier films--many of which were based on works of literature and included art movements imported from France and Germany. Of these films, one thankfully survives and is widely available for viewing. The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of Bolsheviks is an early Soviet film and a silent comedy, released in April of 1924. It is the only film on which he has a formal editing credit; it was directed by Lev Kuleshov, who was young enough to be considered one of the very first truly Soviet directors. Levitsky's last film was the little heard of Yad, directed by Evgeniy Ivanov-Barkov and released in 1927. Levitsky appeared in one film in 1915--Ekaterina Ivanovna--a film that he also shot for Uralsky. He has a cinematography credit from 1958 that included some of his original photography of Lenin; Zhinvoy Lenin was documentary short of still and moving footage of Lenin, though completed in 1958--it was not released in the Soviet Union until 1969. Levitsky himself died on July 4 in 1965 in Moscow at the age of 79. I can find no information as where he is buried, but it must be somewhere in the greater Moscow area.
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