Vasily Zhuravlyov

Biography

Vasily Zhuravlyov was born in the city of Ryazan in the Ryazan district in the Russian Empire on August 2, 1904. His father was an accountant, publicist and writer. Though still only in his late teens, Zhuravlyov served as a driver and security officer in the civil war following the communist revolution in 1917. In 1923 he entered the State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow (currently [2014] the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, VGIK) as an acting student, although when he graduated in 1927 he was dead set on becoming a director. His first production as an assistant director was the production Kruzheva (Lace), directed by Sergei Yutkevich. He received some acclaim with his first major productions Bombist (The Bomber, 1932) and Revanzh (The Rematch, 1932), which led to him starting production of his space epic Kosmicheskiy reys: Fantasticheskaya novella (Cosmic Voyage) in 1933. Released in late December 1935, Cosmic Voyage was an expensive and impressive sci-fi film depicting a trip to the moon, drawing heavily on the influence of Fritz Lang's 1929 film Woman in the Moon (Frau im Mond). Despite good reviews and and good box-office numbers, the USSR censors quickly withdrew the film from circulation, due to the heavy use of stop-motion animation, which according to them was not in line with Soviet realism. Kosmicheskiy reys: Fantasticheskaya novella wasn't shown for 50 years, and was largely forgotten, until it was re-released for TV in 1984, and has since garnered much praise. It remains Zhuravlev's best known film for the modern audience. Kosmicheskiy reys: Fantasticheskaya novella was aimed at children, and much of Zhuravlyov's work after that film consisted of kiddie films, usually adventure stories or educational films describing the struggles of the Soviet Union. He specialized in maritime films like Gibel Orla (Death of the Eagle, 1940), Pyatnadtsatiletniy kapitan (Captain at Fifteen, based on the novel of the same name by Jules Verne) and Morskoy Kharakhter (Maritime Character, retelling the life of Soviet marines in WWII, 1970). His last, and one of his most successful, films was the 1980 fairy-tale movie Vsadnik na zolotam kone (The Rider of the Golden Horse), based on Uralic Bashkir legends. Zhuravlev passed away on November 16, 1987, and is considered one of the pioneers of Russian children's movies.