Aleksandr Ivanov-Gai(1878-1926)

Burdened with Russia's most common name (Ivanov = Jones), Aleksandr Ivanovich Ivanov-Gai differentiated himself by the hyphenated "Gai." Thus he should not be confused with another Russian director, Aleksandr Gavrilovich Ivanov [qv] (1898-1984), who was not hyphenated and not related! Ivanov-Gai initially earned his living as an ace newspaper reporter in Moscow before and after the turn of the 20th century. In that capitalist business, like US media reporters today, Ivanov-Gai learned to keep on top of sensational stories whenever possible. And when he switched from print media to film (starting at 1908 at the Hanzhonkov Studio in Moscow), Ivanov-Gai often dealt with topical, even spicy materials that grabbed public attention. Among his "hot topics" were "When the Beast Awakens" ("The Third Gender") and "The Yellow Ticket", both films dating from 1916-17. Ivanov-Gai's overall film directing career, which lasted from 1912 ("The In-Law") to 1925 ("Wife of the Rev-Com-Mgr"), before and after the Russian Revolution, resulted in appx. total 30 films, 26 pre-Revolutionary, 4 post-. Of those 30, only a very small number have been preserved. During the Soviet (Communist) era, the reputation of pre-Communist Ivanov-Gai went into a serious decline. He was viewed as commercial, plot-oriented, plodding and unimaginative, not artistic or creative. And for many decades, almost the only Gai-directed film deemed worthy of mention by Soviet film historians seemed to be "Czar Ivan the Terrible" ('15-'16). That exception was hardly surprising, because the film was preserved, it starred a world-famous opera singer, Chaliapin Sr. (who had the respect of Soviet cultural historians), and because the film derived from classical Russian music and literature (Rimsky-Korsakov and Mei). In Russia's post-Communist, semi-capitalist era (1992- ), it will be interesting to see whether Ivanov-Gai's one-time standing as a highly successful commercial film director in the pre-Communist years will ever be restored...