"Dog in the Manger", "Don Cesar de Bazan", "Tartuffe" - this is not a complete list of films by the Soviet director Jan Fried. He was called the king of musical comedy. To obtain such a title, Freed has come a long creative path. The comedies that made him famous throughout the Union, he took off only closer to the age of 70.
Biography: early years
Yan Borisovich Fried was born on May 31, 1908 in Krasnoyarsk, into a large Jewish family. His real name is Yakov Borukhovich Friedland. My father worked as a shop assistant. His main weakness was the cards, he played every night. The father often played to smithereens, and the family was poor because of this.
At that time Krasnoyarsk was a rich merchant city. And the best artists came to the local drama theater. Frida's family rented out rooms to visitors in order to somehow make ends meet. Artists often took Yan and his older brother Gregory to the theater. There, the boys whiled away their time in the dressing rooms, helping the costume designers. Also, the artists treated them to sweets. And when children were needed for extras, the brothers went on stage. By the age of eight, Yang fell in love with the theater.
The October Revolution began two years later. Ian was a minor then, but he was still accepted into the army as a volunteer. Of course, he did not participate in hostilities, but helped in the hospital.
Shortly after the end of the revolution, Fried moved to Leningrad, where he entered the directing department of the local theater institute. In parallel, Jan worked part-time at the Meyerhold Theater and created the Blue Blouses collective, with which he began staging plays on revolutionary themes. He showed them in the 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 Film Academy, Jan Fried came to Lenfilm. In 1939 he directed his first film. It was a short film. The picture was called "Surgery", it is based on the story of the same name by Anton Chekhov. In the same year, the Patriot adventure film for children was released. A year later, he staged the painting "The Return".
Fried had many ideas and plans. The war prevented their implementation. Freed went to the front in October 1941. He fought in the flight unit, took part in lifting the blockade of Leningrad, liberated the Baltic states, reached Berlin and even left an inscription on the column of the defeated Reichstag. Freed returned from the front as a major.
His first directorial work after the war was the picture "Lyubov Yarovaya". 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 a play by William Shakespeare. The picture became one of the leaders of the box office in 1955. She was also honored at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Despite this, after the release of the film, Frida was put in a wheel for five years. The censors felt that musical comedies corrupted the 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 Manger" was released. The main roles in it went to Mikhail Boyarsky and Margarita Terekhova. The film was a resounding success. Jan Frid was then 69 years old. This painting was awarded the State Prize.
After such success, Fried realized that he needed to continue filming musical comedies. Subsequent films were also received by the audience with a bang.
Before perestroika, Fried managed to shoot six films:
- "Bat";
- "Silvia";
- "Pious Martha";
- Don Cesar de Bazan;
- "Free wind";
- "Tartuffe".
Fried had amazing directing intuition. In his paintings, he invited actors who subsequently built deafening careers. So, it was in one of his films that the then still unknown Lyudmila Gurchenko appeared for the first time. Fried loved to work with Mikhail Boyarsky, Nikolai Karachentsev, Vitaly Solomin.
Tartuffe was Fried's last film. It was released in 1992. In the same year, the director and his wife moved to Germany. There they settled in Stuttgart, where Alena's daughter lived.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, filmmakers had hard times. There was no work at all. By that time, Jan Frid was already well over 80 years old, but he was still depressed by the lack of demand.
He received the title of People's Artist when he was already in Germany. And the director was awarded the Order of Friendship posthumously.
Personal life
Jan Fried was married to actress Victoria Gorshenina. For more than 40 years she has appeared on the stage of the Leningrad Variety and Miniature Theater. Yana and Victoria were introduced by Arkady Raikin. They got married in 1945, immediately after Fried's return from the front, and lived together for about half a century. The couple had a daughter, who was named Alena.
Freed has repeatedly filmed his wife in his films. True, Victoria received cameo roles, since the theater was reluctant to let her go to shoot, which could last several months. And the "boss" - Arkady Raikin - was against the leading actress of his theater flashed on the screen. But for the sake of his longtime friend Fried, he made exceptions. Thus, Victoria played Countess Eckenberg in Silva, dona Casilda in Don Cesar de Bazan, Parnel in Tartuffe. These small roles made her a recognizable actress. And film critics often called Gorshenina the queen of episodes of Soviet musical comedies.
The last 10 years of his life, Jan Fried lived in Germany. He died in 2003. He was 95 years old. The director's grave is located in one of the cemeteries of Stuttgart.
