Nathalie Kovanko

Nathalie Kovanko (1899-1967) was a Russian-Ukrainian actress who played in Russian and French silent cinema. She started her career in 1917 at the Ermolieff studio in Yalta. Kovanko appeared in many films by her husband Victor Tourjansky. During the Russian Revolution, they fled Crimea and emigrated to France, where they built up new careers.


Russian postcard. Photo: Ermoliev. Natalie Kovanko in Oброненнаr мечта/A Lost Dream (Victor Tourjansky/ Vyacheslav Turzhansky, 1919). The actor is probably Victor Tourjansky himself. When the film was shown in Moscow in 1922, three years after its production, Russia had changed into the Soviet Union and its mentality had radically changed. The critic of the journal Teatral’naia Moskva, considered it old hat, with a plot pieced together from Aleksandr Ostrovskii's play 'The Storm' and less so from Pushkin's novel 'Dubrovsky'. While the performance of Kovanko was praised, the cinematography was called old-fashioned and even the print wasn't pristine anymore. Yet, thanks to this debunking review, we know now the plot of this - lost - film, which is lacking in IMDb. Plot: a merchant's daughter falls in love with a dashing aristocratic lieutenant, but her mother marries her off to the senior manager of her own business. The lieutenant tries to save her right at the altar, but he fails as the mother is more clever than he is. The husband proves to be even worse than expected and out of despair, the young wife throws herself into a well.


French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 27. Photo: Studio Pathé Consortium Cinéma. Nathalie Kovanko as Hélène in Jean d'Agrève (René Leprince, 1922).


Romanian postcard. Nathalie Kovanko in Le chante de l'amour triomphant/The Song of Triumphant Love (Viktor Tourjansky, 1923).


French postcard by Editions Filma, no. 143. Photo: Ermolieff. Nathalie Kovanko as the princess Goul-y-Hanar [Gulnare]/Shéhérazade in Les contes de mille et une nuits/The Tales of a Thousand and One Nights (Viktor Tourjansky, 1921).


Croatian postcard by Mosinger Film, Zagreb. Collection: Didier Hanson. Nathalie Kovanko and Jaque Catelain in Le prince charmant/Prince Charming (Viktor Tourjansky, 1925).


French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 299. Nathalie Kovanko in Michel Strogoff (Victor Tourjansky, 1926).

Escape from Crimea

Natalia Ivanovna Kovanko (Наталья Ивановна Кованько) was born in Yalta, Russian Empire (now Crimea, claimed by Ukraine) in 1899. She was the sister of author/scriptwriter Boris de Fast, né Boris Fastovich.

Natalia debuted in the Russian cinema in 1917 in Kozy…kozochki…kozly/The Goats (Ivan Perestani, 1917) with Viatcheslav (Victor) Tourjansky and Nikolai Orlov.

In 1917-1919 she played in many Russian films shot in Yalta at the Ermolieff studio, of which most were directed by actor-turned-director Victor Tourjansky: Zakoldovanny ykrug/The Vicious Circle (1917), Bolotnye mirazhi/Storm in March (1918), Bal gospoden/The Eternal Ball (1918), Irene Negludov (1919), and Grekh i iskuplenie/Sin and Redemption (1919).

She also played in a film by animation master Ladislas Starevitch, Sorotchinskai a yarmaka/The Sorotochinsk Fair (1918).

Kovanko and Tourjansky had married in the meanwhile. When the Red Army reached Yalta, the couple, together with the other Ermolieff actors including Ivan Mozzhukhin, Nicolas Koline, Nicolas Rimsky, and Nathalie Lissenko, fled the Crimea and emigrated to France. In Paris, Tourjansky and Kovanko managed to build up new careers through the help of the Russian producers Alexander Kamenka and Joseph Ermolieff.


Russian postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson.


Romanian postcard. Nathalie Kovanko in Le chante de l'amour triomphant/The Song of Triumphant Love (Viktor Tourjansky, 1923).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1067/1, 1927-1928. Photo: De Westi.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1067/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Dewesti Film GmbH. Nathalie Kovanko in the Albatros production La dame masquée (Viktor Tourjansky, 1924).


Probably Croatian postcard, dated 27-4-1927, editor unknown. Photo: Films Albatros. Jean Angelo and Nathalie Kovanko in Le prince charmant/Prince Charming (Viktor Tourjansky, 1925).


French postcard. With Jaque Catelain in Le prince charmant (Viktor Tourjansky, 1925).


French postcard. Jaque Catelain and Kovanko in Le prince charmant/Prince Charming (Viktor Tourjansky, 1925).

A French film star

For a decade Nathalie Kovanko was a French film star in films that were almost all directed by her husband. One exception was Jean d’Algreve (1922) by René Leprince, with Léon Mathot.

Among the films directed by her husband were L’ordonnance/The Order (1921) with Alexandre Colas, Les contes de mille et une nuits/Tales from Arabian Nights (1921), Nuit de carnaval/Carnival Night (1922) with Nicolas Rimsky and Nicolas Koline, and Le quinzième prélude de Chopin/The Fifteenth Chopin Prelude (1922) with André Nox.

Then followed Le chant de l’amour triomphant/The Song of Triumphant Love (1923) with Jean Angelo and Rolla Norman, Calvaire d’amour/Calvary Love (1923) with Charles Vanel, and La dame masquée/The Masked Lady (1924) with René Maupré. In Le prince charmant/Prince Charming (1925) she co-starred with Jaque Catelain. In Michel Strogoff/Michael Strogoff (1926), she played Nadia Fedor and Ivan Mozzhukhin was Strogoff. It was her last silent film.

She did not collaborate on Abel Gance’s Napoléon for which Tourjansky assisted Gance, neither was she involved in the film projects of her husband in Hollywood in 1928, or in his German films from the late 1920s. Kovanko’s last film was the sound film Volga en flammes (Viktor Tourjansky, 1934) starring Albert Préjean.

In 1931 Tourjansky discovered Simone Simon and directed her in Le Chanteur inconnu/The Unknown Singer (1931). The two became a pair and Tourjansky directed her again in Les yeux noirs/The Black Eyes (1935). Nathalie Kovanko divorced from Tourjansky and returned to Ukraine. There she died in Kiev in 1967.


Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag no. 574. Photo: Micheluzzi-Film. Ivan Mozzhukhin and Nathalie Kovanko in the French silent film Michel Strogoff/Michael Strogoff (Viktor Tourjansky, 1926).


Romanian postcard by Editura Librariei SOCEC & Co. S.A., Bucuresti, no. 53. Photo: Monopol "Lux-Film". Ivan Mozzhukhin and Nathalie Kovanko in Michel Strogoff/Michael Strogoff (Viktor Tourjansky, 1926).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1511/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Deulig. Nathalie Kovanko in Michel Strogoff/Michael Strogoff (Viktor Tourjansky, 1926).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1512/1. Photo: Deulig. Publicity still for Michel Strogoff/Michael Strogoff (Viktor Tourjansky, 1926). Nadia Fedor consoles Michael Strogoff (Ivan Mozzhukhin) after he is blinded.


German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. 3570/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Arthur Erma, Hollywood / Ama-Film.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3570/2, 1928-1929. Photo: Ama-Film.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3637/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Atelier Ernst Schneider, Berlin.

Sources: N. Nikaleb ('Kino-retsenzii'. Teatral’naia Moskva), Ciné-Artistes (French), Wikipedia (French) and IMDb. With thanks to Natalia Noussinova for the identification, and to Anna Kovalova and Alena Chekina for the review 'Kino-retsenzii', with the plot description and its translation.

This post was last updated on 8 January 2025.

One Hundred Years Ago: Films Albatros

Oliver Hanley curates the One Hundred Years Ago section at Il Cinema Ritrovato this year. He explores the rich and varied history of the cinema in 1923 and selected classics, archival rarities and thought-provoking documentaries from 1923. In Hollywood, the Western became a serious genre in Hollywood, in Germany, the expressionist cinema reached its pinnacle and in Italy, the final Diva films were made. In this post, EFSP focuses on France where the exiled Russian filmmakers started to work at the studio Films Albatros in a suburb of Paris and produced several highlights of the European silent cinema.


German postcard by Ross Verlag. no. 1064/1. Photo: DeWesti Film-Verleih. Ivan Mozzhukhin in Kean/Edmund Kean: Prince Among Lovers (Alexandre Volkoff, 1924).


Romanian postcard. Nathalie Kovanko in Le chant de l'amour triomphant/The song of triumphant love (Viktor Tourjansky, 1923).


French postcard. Nicolas Rimsky probably in the Albatros producton Calvaire d'amour (Viktor Tourjansky, 1923).


French postcard, with names written in Russian. Nathalie Lissenko, Nicolas Koline and Nicolas Rimsky in the Albatros producton Calvaire d'amour (Viktor Tourjansky, 1923).


French postcard by Cinémagazine no. 169. Ivan Mozzhukhin played the male lead of Prince Roundghito-Sing in the Albatross production Le lion des Mogols/The Lion of the Moguls (Jean Epstein, 1924). While the Moghol empire is falling apart, Prince Roundghito-Sing decides to leave and make films in Paris, where he falls for the attractions of the city.

Upright in the storm

Films Albatros was a French film production company established in 1922. It was formed by a group of White Russian exiles who had been forced to flee following the 1917 Russian Revolution and subsequent Russian Civil War. Initially, the firm's personnel consisted mainly of Russian exiles, but over time French actors and directors were employed by the company too. Its operations continued until the late 1930s. Faced with increasingly difficult working conditions in Russia after the revolution of 1917, the film producer Joseph Ermolieff decided to move his operations to Paris where he had connections with the Pathé company.

Arriving in 1920 with a group of close associates, Ermolieff took over a studio in Montreuil-sous-Bois in the eastern suburbs of Paris and began making films through his company Ermolieff-Cinéma. His co-founder of the company was Alexandre Kamenka, another Russian exile. In 1922 Ermolieff moved to Germany. Kamenka and his colleagues Noë Bloch and Maurice Hache decided to take over the company. They re-established it as the Société des Films Albatros. Kamenka also set up a distribution company called Les Films Armor in order to control the distribution of his own films. Various explanations have been given for the choice of the name Albatros. Was it the name of a boat which brought some of the émigrés from Russia? Was it a symbol of White Russia? Did an incident with an albatross happen on the journey? As well as adopting the image of the albatross as its symbol, the company took the motto 'Debout dans la tempête' (Upright in the storm).

Among the group of Russian artists who stayed to work with Albatros were the directors Victor Tourjansky and Alexandre Volkoff, the art director Alexandre Lochakoff, the costume designer Boris Bilinsky, and the actors Ivan Mozzhukhin (in French Ivan Mosjoukine and in German Iwan Mosjukin), Nathalie Lissenko, Nicolas Koline, and Nicolas Rimsky. Although this Russian company initially favoured Russian themes, Kamenka quickly realised the need for greater integration with French film production, and they turned increasingly to French subjects. In 1924 a number of Kamenka's Russian associates left Albatros, and Kamenka offered opportunities to several innovative French filmmakers including Jean Epstein, Jacques Feyder, Marcel L'Herbier and René Clair.

Kamenka's production policy combined prestige projects with openly commercial films, and his consistent record made him the most successful French producer during the 1920s, according to Charles Spaak, who came to the company as a scriptwriter in 1928. Kamenka successfully achieved international distribution for many of his films - even in Soviet Russia with which his company had so little political sympathy. From 1927, he entered into co-production arrangements with production companies in other European countries, driven by growing financial difficulties in the French film industry.

The arrival of sound pictures posed a serious difficulty for Albatros which had hitherto relied considerably upon Russian actors, especially Mozzhukhin whose accent precluded a successful transition into the talking era. The company's output diminished in the 1930s, but it achieved one further artistic success of note when Jean Renoir joined them for his adaptation of Maxim Gorky's Les Bas-fonds/The Lower Depths (1936). By this time, Albatros was the longest surviving film company operating in France, but with the outbreak of World War II, Kamenka wound up the company which had remained particularly associated with silent cinema.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1064/3, 1927-1928. Photo: DeWesti Film-Verleih. Ivan Mozzhukhin in the Albatros production Kean (Alexandre Volkoff, 1924).


Russian postcard by Goznak, Moscow, Serie no. 5, no. A 4711, 1928. The card was issued in an edition of 25.000 copies. The price was 10 Kop. Photo: Ivan Mozzhukhin in Kean/Edmund Kean: Prince Among Lovers (Alexandre Volkoff, 1924).


French postcard by Cinémagazine Editions, no. 231. Photo: Nathalie Lissenko in Kean/Edmund Kean (Alexandre Volkoff a.k.a. Alexander Volkov, 1924).


German postcard. Photo: Nicolas Koline in Kean/Edmund Kean: Prince Among Lovers (Alexandre Volkoff a.k.a. Alexander Volkov, 1924).


Belgian postcard. Nathalie Kovanko and Nicolas Koline in the Albatros production La dame masquée (Viktor Tourjansky 1924).


French postcard. Jaque Catelain and Nathalie Kovanko in Le prince charmant/Prince Charming (Viktor Tourjansky, 1925).


French or Romanian postcard. Photo: Albatros Films. Ivan Mozzhukhin.


French postcard by Cinémagazine Editions, no. 135. Nicolas Koline.


French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 318. Nicolas Rimsky.


French postcard in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series by A.N., Paris, no. 89. Photo: Film Albatros. Ivan Mozzhukhin.

Sources: Il Cinema Ritrovato, Wikipedia (English and French) and IMDb.

Michel Strogoff (1926)

Ivan Mozzhukhin and Nathalie Kovanko were the stars of the French-German silent film Michel Strogoff (Victor Tourjansky, 1926), based on Jules Verne's classic novel. In many European countries, postcards were published for this classic adventure film.


French postcard by Europe, no. 180. Photo: Société des Cinéromans. Ivan Mozzhukhin, Nathalie Kovanko and Acho Chakatouny in Michel Strogoff (Victor Tourjansky, 1926).


French postcard by Europe, no. 181. Photo: Société des Cinéromans. Ivan Mozzhukhin and Nathalie Kovanko in Michel Strogoff (Viktor Tourjansky, 1926).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1510/3, 1927-1928. Photo: Deulig. Ivan Mozzhukhin in Michel Strogoff (Victor Tourjansky, 1926).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1512/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Deulig. Postcard for Michel Strogoff (Viktor Tourjansky, 1926). Nadia Fedor (Nathalie Kovanko) consoles Michel Strogoff (Ivan Mozzhukhin) after he is blinded.


Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag no. 574. Photo: Micheluzzi-Film. Ivan Mozzhukhin and Nathalie Kovanko in Michel Strogoff (Viktor Tourjansky, 1926).

A magnetic hold on our attention

Jules Verne wrote Michel Strogoff/Michael Strogoff: The Courier of the Czar in 1876, and it is considered one of his best books. The book was later adapted to a play, by Verne himself and Adolphe d'Ennery. Incidental music to the play was written by Alexandre Artus in 1880. The book has been adapted several times for films, television, and even cartoon series.

One of the best versions is this French-German silent film, made by exiles from the Russian Revolution of 1917 under the direction of Victor Tourjansky, shortly before his emigration to Hollywood. The film's art direction was by Eduardo Gosch, César Lacca, Alexandre Lochakoff, Vladimir Meingard, and Pierre Schild who recreated the atmosphere of the mid-nineteenth century Russian Empire.

Tourjansky's screenplay follows Jules Verne's novel to the letter. In 1860s Russia, invading Tartars cut off all telecommunications between the border cities and the capital. The czar (Vladimir Gajdarov) sends the young captain Michael Strogoff (Ivan Mozzhukhin) to deliver a vital message to the last line of defense. Along the way, he finds love with the practical Nadia (Nathalie Kovanko), a woman trying to visit her exiled father in Siberia, and danger from the traitorous Ivan Ogareff (Acho Chakatouny), who wants to stop him at all costs. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Strogoff is captured by The Grand Khan (Boris de Fas), who prepares to shove hot pokers in the hero's eyes while Strogoff's mother (Jeanne Brindeau) looks on helplessly. Despite these and other perils, Strogoff completes his mission and wins the hand of the beautiful Nadia."

Michel Strogoff (Viktor Tourjansky, 1926) was a co-production by Ciné France, Deulig Europa-Produktion and Films de France. This huge production, easily rivalling Hollywood's biggest, represents the European film industry at it's most accomplished. 4,000 soldiers, including cavalrymen, were loaned by the Latvian army to portray the Russian and Tartar armies, and the battles were filmed outside Riga on large plains, which simulated the Siberian steppes.

The result is a wonderfully exciting historical adventure, full of epic sweep, pulsating action, intrigue, romance, and even a little comedy relief. The silent film was a big hit in its time. Despite a 3 hour length, the pace never flags and the story is compelling throughout. Technically the film was cutting edge 1926-style, with its use of colour and tinting and some dazzling editing of the type associated with Abel Gance and Sergei Eisenstein.

Another strong asset of the film is the charismatic performance of Ivan Mozhukhin, who according to reviewer Hamilton65 at IMDb "draws us effortlessly into Strogoff's mission to reach the Tsar in time to save the empire from the Tartars. From his first appearance, Mozhukhin exerts a magnetic hold on our attention. He never overplays, yet conveys a wide range of emotions and thoughts with the subtlest of movements."

With the coming of sound, Michel Strogoff (Viktor Tourjansky, 1926) got virtually forgotten. Renée Lichtig made for the Cinémathèque française a superb restoration which returned the film to its proper state.


Romanian postcard by Editura Librariei SOCEC & Co. S.A., Bucuresti, no. 53. Photo: Monopol "Lux-Film". Ivan Mozzhukhin and Nathalie Kovanko in Michel Strogoff (Viktor Tourjansky, 1926).


Romanian postcard by Editura Librariei SOCEC & Co. S.A., Bucuresti. Photo: Monopol "Lux-Film". Ivan Mozzhukhin in Michel Strogoff (Victor Tourjansky, 1926).


Romanian postcard by Editura Librariei SOCEC & Co. S.A., Bucuresti. Photo: Monopol "Lux-Film". Ivan Mozzhukhin in Michel Strogoff (Victor Tourjansky, 1926).


Romanian postcard by Editura Librariei SOCEC & Co. S.A., Bucuresti. Photo: Monopol "Lux-Film". Ivan Mozzhukhin in Michel Strogoff (Victor Tourjansky, 1926).


Romanian postcard by Editura Librariei SOCEC & Co. S.A., Bucuresti. Photo: Monopol "Lux-Film". Ivan Mozzhukhin in Michel Strogoff (Victor Tourjansky, 1926).


A rough transfer of the ballroom scene from Michel Strogoff (1926) from a 9.5m print, including a section missing from the restoration. The score is Glinka's Valse Fantasie. Source: Christopher Bird (YouTube).

Sources: Hamilton65 (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.