Ivan Ilich Mozzhukhin

Born in 1888, in Moscow (?); died Jan. 18, 1939, in Paris. Russian film actor.

Mozzhukhin attended the law faculty of Moscow University. He later worked in provincial theaters and in the Moscow Vvedenskii People’s House. He made his film debut in 1911 as the violinist Trukhachevskii in The Kreutzer Sonata (based on a work by L. N. Tolstoy) and Admiral Kornilov in The Defense of Sevastopol’. Mozzhukin portrayed Petr in Peasant Fate (1912) and Betskoi in The Women of Tomorrow (1914). Mozzhukhin had a profoundly realistic talent and a fiery temperament. He played romantic heroes in melodramas and acted in comedies of manners and drawing-room and decadent dramas. Mozzhukin was much concerned with gestures and facial mimicry, especially eye expression. His best roles included the officer of the guard Mavrushka in The Little House in Kolomna (1913; based on a work by A. S. Pushkin), the title role in Nikolai Stavrogin (1915; based on F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel The Possessed), Herman in The Queen of Spades (1916; based on a work of A. S. Pushkin), and Prince Kasatskii in Father Sergius (1918; based on a work by L. N. Tolstoy).

In 1920, Mozzhukhin emigrated and acted chiefly in French films, including House of Secrets (1922), Kean (1923), and Child of the Carnival (1921, 1933).