My Life as a Silent Movie: A Novel

Author's Note

Author’s Note Ivan Mosjoukine is one of the greatest film actors of the silent era. Born in Penza, Russia, on September 26, 1889, Mosjoukine was the son of a patrician landowner. Educated in Moscow, where for two years he studied law, he returned to Penza to announce that he wanted to go on the stage. When his father protested and put him back on the train to Moscow, Mosjoukine got off at the first station and began his life as an actor. Mosjoukinestarredincomediesanddramasalike,butbecamefamousforhis explorationsofpsychologicalrealism.Mosjoukine’sperformancesinTheQueen of Spades andFather SergiusareamongthefinestinRussiansilentcinema.After therevolution,MosjoukinefollowedotherRussianémigréstoFrance,wherehe createdhismostremarkableworkasadirector,theexperimentalfilmLe Brasier Ardent.Healsostarredintheclassicfilms Kean,The Late Mathias Pascal, Michel Strogoff, and his last, most ambitious French silent picture, Casanova. In 1926, Mosjoukine, with a Universal Studios contract in hand, sailed for Hollywood.UniversalcasthimintheleadingroleinSurrender,anadaptationof a stage standard about a Jewish girl and a Cossack who fall in love. The reviews were disastrous, and Mosjoukine returned to Europe to act in German productions . His last silent films were Manolescu and Der Weisse Teufel. Mosjoukine appearedinsoundfilms,butrolesforanactorwithaheavyRussianaccentwere limited. He died from tuberculosis on January 18, 1939, in a hospital at Neuillysur -Seine,France,attheageofforty-nine.Hewasburiedinapoorgravemarked only by a wooden cross. This page intentionally left blank JESSE LEE KERCHEVAL was born in France and raised in Florida. She is the author of twelve books of poetry, fiction, and memoirs including Brazil, winner of the Ruthanne Wiley Memorial Novella Award; the poetry collection Cinema Muto, winner of the Crab Orchard Open Selection Award; The Alice Stories, winner of the Prairie Schooner Fiction Book Prize; and the memoir Space about growing up near Cape Canaveral during the moon race. She teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Wisconsin. ...