Vladimir Gajdarov

Ukrainian actor Vladimir Gajdarov (1893-1976), in Germany known as Wladimir Gaidarow, began his film career in Russia before the October Revolution. Later he became a popular star in German and French silent cinema. The sound film made him return to his home country, but in the Soviet Union, he had a hard time getting work.


German postcard by FM, no 5153. Photo: Studium Film. Vladimir Gajdarov as Paris in Helena (Manfred Noa, 1924).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 887/1, 1925-1926. Caption: Vladimir Gajdarov (Waldimir Gaidarow) in a double role.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 977/1, 1925-1926. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.


Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 129. Photo: A. Stefano Pittaluga. Lya de Putti and Vladimir Gajdarov in Manon Lescaut (Arthur Robison, 1926).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1412/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3401/2, 1928-1929. Photo: Atelier Hanni Schwarz, Berlin.

Stanislavski

Vladimir Georgiyevich Gajdarov was born in Poltava, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), in 1893. He supposedly was the son of a noble family.

He studied history, philosophy and the German language before he became a pupil of the famous stage director Konstantin Stanislavski. Soon he became a very popular actor on the Russian stage.

He began his film career in Russia before the October Revolution. His first appearance was opposite his wife-to-be, the famous Stanislavski actress Olga Gzovskaya, in Yeyo zhertva/Her Sacrifice (Cheslav Sabinsky, 1917) based on a play by Henrik Ibsen.

Next, he played with Ivan Mozzhukhin in Ne nado krovi/Blood Need Not Be Spilled (Yakov Protazanov, Alexandre Volkoff, 1917). The two actors were also featured in Otyets Sergei/Father Sergei (Yakov Protazanov, Alexandre Volkoff, 1917-1918), based on a Leo Tolstoy story. This popular film tells the tale of an officer who becomes a monk after hearing of his fiancée's affair with the Tsar.

Another film was Iola (1920) by animation filmmaker Wladyslaw Starewicz. In 1920 Gajdarov and Olga Gzovskaya left Russia. They eventually arrived in Turkey, and in Constantinople, he directed two films to raise money to aid the many stranded Russian refugees who had fled the Bolsheviks.


Latvian (?) postcard by KLTD.


Hungarian postcard by SZ.S.B, no. 30. Photo: Halmos Fotó.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 653/5. Photo: May-Film. Mia May and Vladimir Gajdarov in Tragödie der Liebe/Tragedy of Love (Joe May, 1923).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 883/1, 1925-1926.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 893/1, 1925-26. Photo: Becker & Maass, Berlin.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 893/4, 1925-1926. Photo: Becker & Maass, Berlin.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 937/1, 1925-1926. Vladimir Gajdarov in the stage play 'Schuld und Sühne' (Crime and Punishment), based on Dostojevski's classic novel.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 937/2, 1925-1926. Vladimir Gajdarov and Olga Gzovskaya in Schuld und Sühne, an adaptation of Dostoevski's Crime and Punishment (Raskolnikov). Unclear which film this is, as a 1922/1923 German version, called Raskolnikow (directed by Robert Wiene), starred Grigori Chmara and not Gajdarov.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 977/2, 1925-1926. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.

Haunted, pale face

In the following years, Vladimir Gajdarov worked in various European countries. Especially in Germany, he found rewarding roles in films.

With his haunted, pale face he acted in Der brennende Acker/The Burning Earth (F.W. Murnau, 1922) opposite Lya de Putti, and in Die Gezeichneten/Love One Another (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1922).

Gajdarob played a double role in the Alexandre Dumas père adaptation Der Mann mit der eisernen Maske/The Man in the Iron Mask (Max Glass, 1923) starring Albert Bassermann. Other popular German films were the serial Tragödie der Liebe/The Tragedy of Love (Joe May, 1923) with Marlene Dietrich, and Manon Lescaut (Arthur Robison, 1926), again opposite Lya de Putti.

In France, he appeared as Vladimir Gaidaroff in Le roman d'un jeune homme pauvre/The Novel of a Poor Young Man (Gaston Ravel, 1926) with Maly Delschaft, and in La Madone des sleepings/Madonna of the Sleeping Cars (Marco de Gastyne, Maurice Gleize, 1927).

He starred as an exotic lady-killer in Die Weisse Sklavin/The White Slave (Augusto Genina, 1927) opposite Liane Haid, and in Frauenraub in Marokko (Gennaro Righelli, 1928) with Dolly Davis.


French postcard by Europe no. 291. Photo: Cinéromans Films de France.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1412/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Alex Binder.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1412/4, 1927-1928. Photo: Alex Binder.


German postcard. Ross Verlag, no. 1602/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Atelier Schneider, Berlin.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1602/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Atelier Schneider, Berlin.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1673/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1675/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.

Siberia

When the sound film arrived Vladimir Gajdarov's possibilities on the international film scene were seriously reduced. In 1930 he took on the position of film director and producer and made Kire lained/Wells of Passion (1930) with Ita Rina, but soon he had to return to acting again.

He appeared in a few German productions like Nachtkolonne/Night Convoy (James Bauer, 1931), and Luise, Königin von Preussen/Luise, Queen of Prussia (Carl Froelich, 1931), starring Henny Porten.

In 1932 he and Olga Gzovskaya returned to the Soviet Union. As former émigrés, they were unable to find employment until 1937.

During the Stalinist repression, with hundreds of people arrested every day, Gzovskaya wrote to Konstantin Stanislavski twice, begging for his help. Stanislavski responded with a letter, which helped them both to find professional work in theatres in Leningrad.

Later Gajdarov appeared in the propaganda film Stalingradskaya bitva/The Battle of Stalingrad (Vladimir Petrov, 1949-1950), Geroite na Shipka/Heroes of Shipka (Sergei Vasilyev, 1954), and the Norwegian-Russian coproduction Bare et liv/The History of Fridtjof Nansen (Sergei Mikalyen, 1968).

Vladimir Gajdarov published his memoirs in 1966. He died in Poltava, Siberia in 1976.


German postcard by Ross, Berlin, no. 1978/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Alex Binder.


German postcard by Ross, Berlin, no. 1974/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Atelier Hanni Schwarz, Berlin.


German postcard by Ross Verlag no. 3619/2, 1928-1929. Photo: Kipho Production.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3830/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Atelier Hanni Schwarz, Berlin.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 3882/2, 1928-1929. Photo: Lichtenstein, Berlin. Vladimir Gajdarov in Frauenraub in Marokko/The Love of a Sheik (Gennaro Righelli, 1928).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3883/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 4155/1, 1929-1930. Photo: FPS.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 4448/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Tonka, Zagreb.

Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Silents are Golden, The Silent Cinema Reader, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Der brennende Acker (1922)

This week's film special is about the German silent film Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922). Murnau shot this drama right before his vampire classic Nosferatu (1922). Der brennende Acker is remarkable for its beautiful exterior shots and its all-star cast, including Vladimir Gajdarov and Lya de Putti. For many decades the film was considered lost, but in 1978 an almost complete print was found in the estate of an Italian priest. This beautiful series of postcards by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, was published for the French release of the film, in France titled La terre qui flambe.


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922). Maria (Grete Diercks) works in the household of Peter Rog and his father. Peter is in love with her and wants to marry her, but she instead loves his younger brother Johannes.


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922) with Eugen Klöpfer as Peter Rog.


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922). Peter Rog (Eugen Klöpfer) takes care of his dying father (Werner Krauss).

The Devil's Field

Der brennende Acker presents two households: that of the wealthy Count Josef Emmanuel of Rudenberg and the Rogs, a fairly prosperous farm family who live nearby.

When the old farmer Rog (Werner Krauss) dies, his hard-working son Peter (Eugen Klöpfer) attends him and stays at the farm after his father's death.

The other, younger son is the more worldly Johannes (Vladimir Gajdarov). He has great ambitions and he refuses the love of the servant Maria (Grete Diercks).

His ambition leads the handsome Johannes to charm Gerda (Lya de Putti), the daughter of the old Count Rudenberg (Eduard von Winterstein), who is also dying. Gerda helps Johannes to a job as the secretary of the Count.

Johannes discovers that the Count's second wife Helga (Stella Arbenina) will inherit the Devil's Field. Only he knows that the land sits on an untapped oil field worth a fortune.

Joahnnes turns his attention from Gerda to Helga. When she is widowed, he marries her. His greed leads to death and burning soil.


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922). At the farm of the Rog family. The housemaid Maria (Grete Diercks) eyes Johannes Rog (Vladimir Gajdarov), but he is only interested in money.


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922) with Grete Diercks as the housemaid Marie.

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau

In the 1920s Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (1888-1931) was with Fritz Lang and G. W. Pabst one of the three great German film directors. Sandra Brennan at AllMovie writes that "To this day German filmmaker F.W.Murnau remains one of the most influential directors of cinema."

He made his directorial debut in 1919, the fantasy film Der Knabe in Blau/Emerald of Death (1919). His next films were also fantasy films: The three-part Satanas/Satan (1919), Murnau's first film with cinematographer Karl Freund and leading actor Conrad Veidt, and Der Bucklige und die Tänzerin/The Hunchback and the Dancer (1920), that marked the start of Murnau's collaboration with screenplay writer Carl Mayer.

With Schloss Vogelöd/The Haunted Castle (1921), filmed in only 16 days, Murnau already proved his ability to create an atmosphere of fear and horror, an ability that he masterly refined in Der Brennende Acker (1922) and his famous vampire film Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens/Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (1922).

His next film, Der letzte Mann/The Last Laugh (1924), utilized unique camera techniques that later became the basis for mise-en-scene. For this film, Karl Freund masterly operated the 'moving camera'. Besides Der letzte Mann, Murnau's literary adaptations Tartüff/Tartuffe (1925) and Faust (1925/26) also rank among the classic films of Weimar cinema produced by Erich Pommer.

In 1926, Murnau moved to Hollywood to work for Fox studios. His first American film, Sunrise: A Story of Two Humans (1927), is considered to be the apex of German silent cinema and won an Academy Award for its artistic quality. His second American film Four Devils (1928) was turned into a happy ending and was equipped with a soundtrack. The same happened to Our Daily Bread/City Girl (1929-1930).

Murnau returned to Berlin but his negotiations with Ufa did not lead to a result. In 1929, he travelled to Tahiti where he made the naïve love story Tabu (1931) at his own expense. Deep in debt, he returned to Hollywood, where Paramount offered him a ten-year contract. Tabu became a box-office hit, but the week before it opened, F.W. Murnau was killed in an auto accident. He was only 42.


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922). Gerda (Lya de Putti) and her maid (Leonie Taliansky).


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922). Count Rudenburg (Eduard von Winterstein), flanked by, left, his daughter Gerda (Lya de Putti), and right, his second wife Helga (Stella Arbenina).

Der brennende Acker

Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil or in French La terre qui flambe was considered lost for a long time. Until 1978 only the last three reels (totalling 843 meters compared to the original 2,645) of the film were known: this was the black-and-white copy preserved by the East German Cinematheque. In 1979, an almost complete copy of the film was identified only by film historian Vittorio Martinelli at the Cineteca Italiana in Milan. It was a version distributed in Italy under the title 'Il campo del diavolo' (The Devil's Field) whose opening credits and captions in Italian had certainly been made in Italy and whose images were developed in Germany. The copy belonged to a small collection of an Italian religious man who worked in institutions for the mentally ill and entertained the sick by showing old films.

Enno Patalas, director of the Münchener Filmmuseum, obtained an early black-and-white copy from a negative made in Milan: the Italian captions were replaced in Munich with new German titles from the script in the possession of F.W. Murnau's niece. From the early 1980s, this "lost" film was thus once again visible in Germany. However, a colour original still existed in Milan: with the collaboration of the Cineteca Italiana, the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz received the original material on which it was able to begin restoration work.

Having found the original censorship visa of 25 February 1922 with the text of all the captions, it was possible for the Münchener Filmmuseum to reconstruct the captions and inserts (the newspaper pages, letters, will, etc.) with the collaboration of the Pfenninger laboratory. In the absence of a model for the exact layout of the captions, inspiration was taken from other German films of the early 1920s, using dark green as the colour of the captions and light yellow as the colour of the inserts. The restored, colour version of Der brennende Acker was internationally first presented at the festival 'Il Cinema Ritrovato' in Bologna in November 1993.

Helmut Regel in the catalogue of 'Il Cinema Ritrovato', November 1993: "If the Milan copy had a length, including the Italian captions, of 2,346 meters, the new colour negative after the insertion of the new captions measures 2,325 meters. A missing sequence from a copy in the Moscow Gosfilmofond was, in addition, inserted. It is thus 320 meters short of the original footage of the copy intended by the censors (2,645 meters). In September 1993 the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv finished the restoration at the ABC & Taunus laboratory in Wiesbaden, resulting in a final print that comes enormously close to the original colours of the nitrate print. Finally, the long odyssey of a reconstruction had reached its end."

Der brennende Acker was acclaimed for its visual quality and the contrast between the simple rustic farm and the airy and elegant castle. Thorkell A. Ottarsson at IMDb: "The film is quite dramatic and dark, even surprisingly dark at times. A superb film from one of the best directors of all time." To achieve his visual effects, innovative camera angles, and bold lighting, Murnau had two of the most renowned cameramen photograph the film. Fritz Arno Wagner filmed the first part and Karl Freund the second part, and the sets were built by the equally renowned Rochus Gliese. Karl Freund, who began as a projectionist in Berlin and newsreel cameraman, worked for Ufa in the 1920s and gained the international reputation of being a master cameraman. His later credits include such classics as Metropolis, Der lezte Mann/The Last Laugh, Der Golem/The Golem and Variété/Variety.

W. Morrow at IMDb describes beautifully his fascination for Der brennende Acker: "a sustained mood of wintry melancholy, perked by a number of understated but impressive directorial touches. There's business involving a document torn into little pieces that is poetic. When Murnau was at his peak, in such films as Faust and Sunrise, he would stage his effects on a much grander scale, but here he manages to create a beautiful moment with a few torn pieces of paper."


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922). The old maid talks to the young servants about the Devil's Field.


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922). Helga, Count Rudenburg's second wife (Stella Arbenina), and Gerda, the Count's daughter (Lya de Putti), in a fierce get-together.

French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Der brennende Acker/Burning Soil/La terre qui flambe (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922). Johannes Rog (Vladimir Gajdarov) arrives too late at the deathbed of his father (Werner Krauss), while, left, his brother Peter (Eugen Klöpfer), and right, the maid Maria (Grete Diercks), look on.

Sources: Helmut Regel (article 'Der brennende Acker', in the catalogue Il Cinema Ritrovato, November 1993; text reused on Italian Wikipedia), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), John DeBartolo (Silents are Golden), W. Morrow (IMDb), Thorkell A. Ottarsson (IMDb), Yepok (IMDb), Filmportal.de (German), Wikipedia (German) and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 3 July 2022.

Tragödie der Liebe (1923)

The last film special of 2014 is about the Weimar production, Tragödie der Liebe/Love Tragedy (1923). This silent film serial in four parts was produced and directed by Joe May. His wife, Mia May, played the leading role. The villain was played by the great Emil Jannings.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 653/1, 1919-1924. Photo: May Film. Publicity still for Tragödie der Liebe/Love Tragedy (Joe May, 1923) with Mia May.

Murder

When the husband of countess Manon Moreau (Mia May) is murdered, suspicion falls on André Rabatin (Vladimir Gajdarov), who manages to convince the countess it was all an accident.

When also the count's servant gets murdered, the real culprit of this murder is revealed: the wrestler Ombrade (Emil Jannings), who tried to prevent a secret rendez-vous between his girlfriend Musette (Erika Gläsnner) and the count.

While the countess leaves the courtroom a free woman, Rabatin and Ombrade are condemned to forced labour.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 653/2. Photo: May-Film. Publicity still of Mia May and Vladimir Gajdarov in Tragödie der Liebe (Joe May, 1923).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 653/3. Photo: May-Film. Publicity still of Mia May and Vladimir Gajdarov in Tragödie der Liebe (Joe May, 1923).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 653/4. Photo: May Film. Publicity still of Mia May and Vladimir Gajdarov in Tragödie der Liebe (Joe May, 1923).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 653/5. Photo: May-Film. Publicity still of Mia May and Vladimir Gajdarov in Tragödie der Liebe (Joe May, 1923).

Jealousy

Ten years after:
Manon returns to Paris and finds out that her daughter Kitty, living with her grandmother, and André, released from prison, have an affair. She begs him not to destroy her daughter's life as well.

Ombrade, released from prison and made jealous by Musette, enters the house and kills André in a fight.

While Manon is first suspected, in the end mother and daughter are cleared from all suspicion.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 665/2, 1919-1924. Photo: May Film. Publicity still for Tragödie der Liebe/Love Tragedy (1923) with Emil Jannings.

Source: Filmportal.de (German), Wikipedia (German) and IMDb.