“Dog in the Hay”, “Don Cesar de Bazan”, “Tartuffe” is far from a complete list of films by the Soviet director Jan Fried. He was called the king of musical comedy. To get such a title, Fried went a long creative way. The comedies that made him famous throughout the Union, he shot only closer to 70 years.
Biography: early years
Yan Borisovich Fried was born on May 31, 1908 in Krasnoyarsk, in a large Jewish family. His real name is Yakov Borukhovich Friedland. My father worked as a clerk in a store. His main weakness was cards; he played every night. Father was often played to pieces, and the family was in poverty because of this.
At that time, Krasnoyarsk was a rich merchant city. And the best artists came to the local drama theater. The Frida family rented visitors to the rooms to somehow make ends meet. Artists often took Jan and his older brother Gregory to the theater. There the boys passed the time in the dressing rooms, helping the dressers. Also, the artists treated them with sweets. And when children were needed for extras, the brothers went on stage. By the age of eight, Jan fell in love with the theater.
Two years later, the October Revolution began. Jan was then a minor, but he was still accepted into the army as a volunteer. Of course, he did not participate in the hostilities, but helped in the hospital.
Soon after the end of the revolution, Fried moved to Leningrad, where he entered the directing department of the local theater institute. At the same time, Jan worked part-time at the Meyerhold Theater and created the Blue Blouses collective, with whom he began setting up plays on revolutionary topics. He showed them in a local tram park. Later, Fried continued his studies at the Film Academy at VGIK on the course of Sergei Eisenstein.
Career
After graduating from the Academy, Ian Fried came to Lenfilm. In 1939, he directed the first film. It was a short meter. The picture was called "Surgery", it was shot based on the story of the same name by Anton Chekhov. In the same year, an adventure film for children "Patriot" was released. And a year later he put the picture "Return".
Fried had many ideas and plans. War impeded their implementation. Fried went to the front in October 1941. He fought in the flight, took part in lifting the siege of Leningrad, freed the Baltic states, reached Berlin and even left an inscription on the column of the defeated Reichstag. From the front, Fried returned as a major.
His first directorial work after the war was the painting "Spring Love". The film about the civil war in Crimea was a success with the Soviet audience.
In 1955, Fried directed Twelfth Night with Clara Luchko in the title role. It was an adaptation of William Shakespeare's play. The picture became one of the leaders in the rental in 1955. She was also celebrated at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Despite this, after the release of the film, Frida was put in wheels for five years. Censors felt that musical comedies corrupted Soviet people.
Over the next two decades, Fried directed several films, including documentaries. But all-Union fame came to him only in the late 70s, when he began working on musical comedies.
In 1977, the famous film "Dog in the Hay" was released. The main roles in it went to Mikhail Boyarsky and Margarita Terekhova. The film was a resounding success. Ian Fried then turned 69 years old. This picture was awarded the State Prize.
After such a success, Fried realized that he needed to continue making musical comedies. Subsequent films were also received by the audience with a bang.
Before perestroika, Fried managed to remove six paintings:
- "Bat";
- "Sylvia";
- "Pious Martha";
- Don Cesar de Bazan
- "Free wind";
- Tartuffe.
Fried had amazing directorial intuition. In his paintings, he invited actors who subsequently built deafening careers. So, it was in one of his films that the then unknown Lyudmila Gurchenko first appeared. Fried liked to work with Mikhail Boyarsky, Nikolai Karachentsev, Vitaly Solomin.
"Tartuffe" was the last film of Fried. It was released in 1992. In the same year, the director and his wife moved to Germany. There they settled in Stuttgart, where Alain's daughter lived.
After the collapse of the Union, filmmakers had hard times. There was no work at all. By that time, Jan Fried was already far beyond 80 years old, but his lack of demand still depressed him.
He received the title of People's Artist when he was already in Germany. And the Director was awarded posthumously with the Order of Friendship.
