World War I and The Russian Revolution
After her husband was drafted to fight in World War I, Kholodnaya signed with a rival Khanzhonkov studio. She starred in The Song of the Triumphant Love (after Turgenev), which proved to become a major box-office hit. At first she imitated the acting of Asta Nielsen but gradually developed her own style. Vera's extravagant costumes and large gray eyes made her an enigmatic screen presence which fascinated audiences across Imperial Russia.
Tremendous success was Pyotr Chardynin’s tragic melodrama The Mirages (1916), followed by the ‘fancy drama’ Beauty Must Reign in the World by Bauer, melodrama Fiery Devil, and another melodrama A Life for a Life, which turned one of the most popular films in Vera Kholodnaya’s career and brought her the title ‘the Queen of Screen’. The author of this title was Alexander Vertinsky who venerated the actress and frequented her house. In 1916 Khanzhonkov’s company started making the film Pierrot with Vertinsky and Kholodnaya playing the leads. Unfortunately, the film was not completed.
By the time of the Russian Revolution, a new Kholodnaya film was released every third week. At the Fire Side was her massive commercial success: the movie was run in cinemas until 1924, when the Soviet authorities ordered many of the Kholodnaya features destroyed. Her last box-office champion was titled Molchi, grust... molchi: like many of her films, it was based on a Russian traditional love song.
During the Russian Civil War, the Bolshevik authorities requested film companies to produce less melodrama and more adaptations of classics. Accordingly, Kholodnaya was cast in a screen version of Tolstoy's The Living Corpse. Her acting abilities in this film were applauded by Stanislavsky, who welcomed Vera to join the troupe of the Moscow Art Theatre.
By that time, the actress had determined to move with her film company to Odessa, where she died at the age of 25 in the 1918 flu pandemic. On learning about her death, Alexander Vertinsky, wrote one of his most poignant songs, "Your fingers smell of church incense, and your lashes sleep in grief..." A director with whom she had worked for several years filmed her large funeral. Ironically, this seems to be her best known film today.
The other five extant films with Vera Kholodnaya are: Children of the Age (1915), The Mirages (1915), A Life for a Life (1916), A Corpse Living (1918), and Molchi, grust... molchi (1918).
Read more about this topic: Vera Kholodnaya
Famous quotes containing the words russian revolution, world, war, russian and/or revolution:
““I suppose with the French Revolution for a father and the Russian Revolution for a mother, you can very well dispense with a family,” he observed.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“You are a thousand times a properer man
Than she a woman. ‘Tis such fools as you
That makes the world full of ill-favored children.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final Note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.”
—Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940)
“I won the battle the wrong way when our worthy Russian generals were losing it the right way.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“If to be masculine is to be smart, do let [woman] try; or are you afraid, if she has the chance, that a few of your laurels will droop?”
—M.C. R., U.S. women’s magazine contributor. The Revolution (March 19, 1868)