Date: 24 March 2004
Location: Marlows
Time: 20:00

Our Patron, David Robinson, says of Mozhukhin: There is really no "mystery" about Mozhukhin: he was simply the greatest romantic actor the cinema has ever known.

There have been scores of romantic icons and idols – and great ones too – but Ivan Mozhukhin remains the romantic actor supreme, in direct line of descent from the English Edmund Kean, whom he personated triumphantly on stage and screen.

Born to a prosperous central Russian family in 1889, Ivan Mozhukhin abandoned his law studies to go on the stage. Fascinated by the possibilities of the cinema, he made his first film in 1911, and quickly became the unrivalled superstar of Imperial Russia. With the Revolution of 1917, he emigrated to France, where he achieved new stardom in films like La Maison the Mystère, Kean, Michel Strogoff and Casanova.

His decline began with a much-heralded Hollywood contract with Universal, which resulted only in one disastrous picture. Returning to Europe, his career was briefly revived in Germany, but sound films presented an insuperable problem to an artist with a thick Russian accent. Already almost forgotten, Ivan Mozhukhin made his final screen appearance in Nitchevo (1936). He died of tuberculosis in a Paris hospital on 18 January 1939, at the age of 49, and was buried in a pauper's grave.

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