Innokenti Smoktunovski

Innokenti Mikhailovich Smoktunovski (Tatianovka, Tomsk, March 28, 1925-Moscow, August 3, 1994) was a Russian actor and set designer.

Biography

Smoktunovsky (left) with his brother Vladimir and his aunt in 1930

She was born in Tatyanovka, a small town in the north of Tomsk Governorate. He studied at the drama school attached to the Krasnoyarsk Pushkin Theater between 1945 and 1946. Between 1946 and 1954 he worked as an actor in the theaters of Norilsk, Makhachkala and Stalingrad. Since 1954 he was a member of the troupe of the Leninskogo Komsomol Theater in Moscow and since 1955 the Theater-Studio of Film Actors attached to the Mosfilm studios.

For three years, from 1957 to 1960, he worked as an actor at the Tovstonogov Grand Academic Drama Theater in Leningrad. He returned to Moscow in 1972 and until 1976 he performed at the Maly Theater in Moscow. In the same year he joined the Moscow Art Theater.

For his performance in Grigori Kozintsev's film Hamlet, he received the Lenin Prize in 1965. He also received the Vasilyev Brothers Prize in 1971 for the role of Porfiry Petrovich in the film Crime and Punishment by Lev Kulidzhanov. In 1974, he was named a People's Artist of the Soviet Union. He died in Moscow.

In 1990, Smoktunovsky won the Nika Award in the Best Actor category. He died on August 3, 1994, in a sanatorium, at the age of 69.

Film career

Smoktunovsky as Hamlet with Anastasiya Vertinskaya in a Soviet seal of 1966

His film career began with the Mikhail Romm film Nine Days in a Year (1962). In 1964, he played the role of Hamlet in the celebrated film version of Shakespeare's play directed by Grigori Kozintsev, which earned him praise from Laurence Olivier and the Lenin Prize. Many English critics even rated Smoktunovsky's Hamlet above that performed by Olivier, at a time when Olivier's was still considered definitive. Smoktunovsky created a comprehensive heroic portrait, mixing what seemed incompatible before: manly simplicity and exquisite aristocratism, kindness and caustic sarcasm, mocking mentality and self-denial.

Smoktunovsky became widely known as Yuri Detochkin in Eldar Ryazanov's detective satire Watch the Car (1966), which revealed the actor's extraordinary comedic skills. Later, he played Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Tchaikovsky (1969), Uncle Vanya in Andrei Konchalovsky's film version of Chekhov's play (1970), Andrei Tarkovsky's Narrator in Mirror (1975), an old man in On Thursday and never again (1977) by Anatoly Efros, and Salieri in Little Tragedies (1979) by Mikhail Schweitzer, based on works by Alexander Pushkin.

Comments from critics and directors

In 1959, Naum Berkovsky in an article dedicated to Tovstonogovsky's The Idiot, described Innokenty Smoktunovsky as an actor with an intellectual style, He described Innokenty Smoktunovsky as an actor with an intellectual style, capable of combining gesture, mime and pose with the "game of the soul". He noted that this stage style has its own tradition, embodied in such names as Pavel Orlenyev (the first performer of the role of Fyodor Ioannovich ), Alexander Moissi and Mikhail Chekhov. However, he was quick to miss the point: "It would be immodest of the critics to arbitrarily equate the young actor to the illustrious names of the past... Smoktunovsky all ahead, going to prove himself, what place should it occupy in the theater".

On the theatrical stage and in the cinema, the actor played various roles: Prince Myshkin and Judushku Golovleva, Hamlet, Yuri Detochkin. What they had in common was his marked introversion. About the film Soldiers, in which the actor first drew attention, they wrote in 1966 Inna Solovyovaand Vera Shitova:

In war circumstances, where separativity seems at once impossible and strange, the hero of Smoktunovsky possessed a kind of organic singularity, a separativity of his existence. This was decisive for all roles, without exception, played by an actor: it is not easy to explain, but the separation of their characters is astonishingly visible. Heroes Smoktunovsky always sociable, always very in contact, the intonation itself is always... looking for feedback. And yet, the people who played, attract and disturb us, the hidden integrity of their inner core... And if the viewer asks what Smoktunovsky likes, he usually answers: "Your charm" - this answer and true and false. The charm of Smoktunovsky is not in the actor's charm, which almost does not, but in this, so rare, even for the modern display charm of the complex, separate, which is becoming difficult and inexhaustible... This is the key to a surprising at first sight, that the top of their papers are sometimes silent passages or minutes of apparent inaction.

Such silent passage was remembered by critics, in particular in the film Nine Days of a Year - when Ilya Kulikov appeared alone in an empty tunnel, and the audience could not see his face or hear her voice, but her walk had it all.

Hamlet, played by the actor Grigory Kozintsev, is melancholic, thoughtful, refined and at the same time for the actor himself he was above all a fighter - "for the human in man". The critics reproached the actor that for his Hamlet there was no such thing as to be or not to be? The actor himself has said that he does not consider that the famous monologue (in the film it appears abbreviated) is the climax of the role, nor that the "Hamlet" itself; be a man of hesitations and doubts; Shakespeare's character seemed to him strong and resolute, endowed with "enormous spiritual will and mental energy," his tragedy was the tragedy of knowledge and not of doubt, and the words of Vissarion Grigorievich Belinsky have become in his guiding beacon: Hamlet is you, it's us, it's me, it's all. -not just about Claudia. "If it is possible to bring the Shakespearean hero as close as possible to us," wrote Maya Turovskaya, "Smoktunovsky succeeds".

The paper, which had been the "crown" of many famous actors before him, including Lawrence Olivier and Mikhail Chekhov, brought the actor wide international recognition, he was highly praised by the public, critics and even his co-stars, but the actor himself remained dissatisfied with both with his work as with the director's interpretation of the tragedy. In general, he was seldom pleased with himself; according to Bella Yezerskaya, at the end of his life, of the two hundred roles played in theater and cinema, the actor considered only ten a perfect success: "Even the "Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich", which critics classified among his masterpieces, he does not consider it a success".

In the 1960s, the actor was often reproached for repeating "Prince Myshkin" in all his roles. Raisa Benyash considered it already then the greatest delusion: "Lyrical excitement, organic intelligence, intellectual subtlety, sharpening of moral tasks, increased sensitivity in the perception of others - all of which is a An integral part of Smoktunovsky's creative personality, many take Prince Myshkin for personal good". In fact, Smoktunovsky, as a character actor, like no one else, was able to remain himself in a variety of roles; At age 58, he was first asked to play the character of a "strongly negative entity"; - Judushka Golovlev, a "scum" that he strangles all life around him and kills with empty talk, Smoktunovsky at first took the suggestion as an insult; but, by suggesting that everyone has at least a drop of such a Judushka, he found that drop in himself as well—and Porfiry Golovlev turned out to be one of his best roles; according to Smelyansky, "one was astounded by the secrets into which the artist looked."

Smoktunovsky," Benyash wrote long before Ivanov and Golovlevyov of Chéjov, "is an actor of true and subtle transfiguration. The fluidity and diversity of their characters, including their external appearance, is not achieved through makeup, but through a complex change of rhythms, ways of communicating with people and adjusting to the emotional wave of a particular person. This leads to a change of internal, mental adaptations. Even the whole structure of existence changes, the movement of thought, the plasticity, always precise and extremely diverse... Even the same human quality is irrecognizably transformed by an actor, appearing in different people.

Judging by the roles Smoktunovsky was often offered on film, it seemed to the directors that this actor could do anything, even pull off a really weak movie; in fact, and critics have pointed this out on more than one occasion, he was much more in need of quality drama than mediocre actors; His highest achievements are mainly due to the classical repertoire, in the modern one he sometimes lacked a lot of three-dimensional character, especially in films, where the originality of the personality, according to the actor, often try to replace "external effect., unexpected angles

The film "Night Guest is introduced by Solovyova and Shitova as The Idiot, written not by Dostoevsky, but by Ganya Ivolgin, fully in keeping with the way she interprets Myshkin's goals and motives in the novel: both selflessness and sensitivity towards others in Smoktunovsky's character, Pal Paliych, turned into sophisticated means of extortion. The "gift of separateness" singled out by critics in the clumsily instructive film Vladimir Shredel, as if mocking the actor, it was used to demonstrate that complex people do not really exist and that any complexity can be broken down into several simple and petty components. And although the actor, as Boris Tulintsev pointed out, enlarged the character, giving it an almost mystical feel, he was unable to overcome the flawed nature of the script.

At the same time, the "business card" of the actor in the cinema, no less than Hamlet, was Yuri Detochkin in the lyrical comedy Eldar Ryazanov. Watch out for the car , where he again demonstrated his mastery of immersion in the image, playing Hamlet again, but no longer as Smoktunovsky, but as a mediocre actor amateur theatre. After his rejection due to occupation and fatigue Ryazanov tried many fine actors for this role, but someone like Leonid Kuravlevu, with all the credibility and truthfulness, Some, like Oleg Yefremov, were good at portraying " Detochkin", but they were not, and therefore gave the impression of being a "wolf in sheep's clothing". Everything came together in the actor, including his natural strangeness: "He himself came to the screen as an individual," Ryazanov wrote. -His distinctive human personality gave that effect of defamiliarizing the Detochkin character, which I could only wish for. This is not achieved with grimaces, tricks or actor tricks..

Both in life and after his death, the actor was awarded the highest epithets, which could only be found in the Russian language, he was not only a "genius", but also "the first, the Russia's first artist",-Oleg Yefremov, who could not speak at the funeral, even after his departure refused to call him & # 34; great & # 34;: there were many & # 34; great & # 34;, Smoktunovsky was one for Yefremov.

Filmography as an actor

Awards and recognitions

San Sebastian International Film Festival

Eponymy

The minor planet 4926 Smoktunovskij is named after him.