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The cinema of the Soviet Union includes films produced by the constituent republics of the Soviet Union reflecting elements of their pre-Soviet culture, language and history, albeit they were all regulated by the central government in Moscow. Most prolific in their republican films, after the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, were Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, and, to a lesser degree, Lithuania, Belarus and Moldavia. At the same time, the nation's film industry, which was fully nationalized throughout most of the country's history, was guided by philosophies and laws propounded by the monopoly Soviet Communist Party which introduced a new view on the cinema, socialist realism, which was different from the one before or after the existence of the Soviet Union.
Musical film is a film genre in which songs by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by singing and dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, but in some cases, they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate "production numbers".
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before sound motion pictures became commercially practical. Reliable synchronization was difficult to achieve with the early sound-on-disc systems, and amplification and recording quality were also inadequate. Innovations in sound-on-film led to the first commercial screening of short motion pictures using the technology, which took place in 1923.
Joseph Walton Losey III was an American theatre and film director, producer, and screenwriter. Born in Wisconsin, he studied in Germany with Bertolt Brecht and then returned to the United States. Blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s, he moved to Europe where he made the remainder of his films, mostly in the United Kingdom. Among the most critically and commercially successful were the films with screenplays by Harold Pinter: The Servant (1963) and The Go-Between (1971).
Social realism is the term used for work produced by painters, printmakers, photographers, writers and filmmakers that aims to draw attention to the real socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structures behind these conditions. While the movement's characteristics vary from nation to nation, it almost always utilizes a form of descriptive or critical realism.
Donald William Crisp was an English film actor as well as an early producer, director and screenwriter. His career lasted from the early silent film era into the 1960s. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1942 for his performance in How Green Was My Valley.
The cinema of Russia began in the Russian Empire, widely developed in the Soviet Union and in the years following its dissolution, the Russian film industry would remain internationally recognized. In the 21st century, Russian cinema has become known internationally with films such as Hardcore Henry (2015), Leviathan (2014), Night Watch (2004) and Brother (1997). The Moscow International Film Festival began in Moscow in 1935. The Nika Award is the main annual national film award in Russia. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has impacted Russian cinema, as it became subjected to a number of boycotts and bans.
Classical Hollywood cinema is a term used in film criticism to describe both a narrative and visual style of filmmaking which became characteristic of American cinema between the 1910s and the 1960s. It eventually became the most powerful and pervasive style of filmmaking worldwide. Similar or associated terms include classical Hollywood narrative, the Golden Age of Hollywood, Old Hollywood, and classical continuity.
Cinema of Europe refers to the film industries and films produced in the continent of Europe.
Ivan Aleksandrovich Pyryev was a Soviet-Russian film director and screenwriter remembered as the high priest of Stalinist cinema. He was awarded six Stalin Prizes, served as Director of the Mosfilm studios (1954–57) and was, for a time, the most influential man in the Soviet motion picture industry.
Gregor Rabinovitch was a Ukrainian-born film producer who worked for many years in the German film industry. He emigrated to France from the Soviet Union in the early 1920s. After working for a time in Germany, he left following the Nazi takeover of power in 1933, and spent a number of years in France and the United States. He later returned and died in Munich in 1953.
Alfred Poznański, better known by his alias Alfred Savoir, was a Polish-born French comedy playwright of Jewish background.
Joseph N. Ermolieff (1889–1962) was a Russian-born film producer. Ermolieff was a prominent figure in early Russian cinema during the Imperial era, owning large studios in Yalta and Moscow. He fled to France following the Russian Revolution and became an established producer there, founding the company Films Albatros. As well as Paris he also worked at the Emelka Studios in Munich. In 1936 he enjoyed a major international success with The Czar's Courier, and he moved to the United States the following year planning to remake the film in English. He settled in America and became a citizen in 1942, but struggled to establish himself in Hollywood despite producing occasional films such as Outpost in Morocco (1949) and Fort Algiers (1953). In 1944 he produced a Mexican version of Michael Strogoff (1944).
Jacques Haïk was a French film producer. Born of Jewish descent in French-controlled Tunisia, he moved to Paris where he found work in the film industry, introducing Charlie Chaplin to French audiences. He gradually built up a chain of cinemas including the Grand Rex (1931), and established his own production company Les Établissements Jacques Haïk which was very active during the early 1930s. Following the introduction of sound film he made several French-language films at the Twickenham Studios in the United Kingdom until his Paris studios were equipped for sound production.
Les Films Corona was a French film distribution company based in Paris. Active between the 1930s and the 1970s, it also took part in film production during its later years under the guidance of Robert Dorfmann. It enjoyed its greatest success in the postwar era. Many of its films such as 1968's Mayerling were co-productions.
André Paulvé was a French film producer. He established his own production and distribution company DisCina with Michel Safra in 1938. During the German Occupation of France after 1940 he based himself at Nice in the Unoccupied Zone. He was a pioneer in co-productions with Italy, establishing a link with the Cinecitta Studios in Rome.
DisCina was a French film production and distribution company established in 1938 by Michel Safra and André Paulvé. It reached its peak during the 1940s and early 1950s, remaining active during the Occupation of France.
Joseph Bercholz (1898–1981) was a Russian-born French film producer. In the 1930s he established the production company Les Films Gibé with Édouard Gide. During the Second World War he left for America where he produced a couple of films in Hollywood for Republic Pictures before returning to France to resume production.
Francinex was a French film production and distribution company active from the 1930s to the 1960s. It had its roots in Italian production interests before the Second World War, who were able to continue during the conflict due to film agreements between Mussolini's Italy and Vichy France. The company was part of the Filmsonor-Cinedis group, but then passed under the direct control of the Italian producer Angelo Rizzoli in 1951. It was involved in many post-war co-productions with Italy including the popular Don Camillo series as well as the Fellini films Boccaccio '70 (1962) and 8½ (1963).
Georges Lourau (1898–1974) was a French film producer active from the 1930s to the 1960s. During the 1930s he was the director of Tobis Filmsonor, the French subsidiary of Germany company Tobis Film based at Epinay Studios in Paris. In the postwar era he was associated with the distribution outfit Cinédis, producing four films directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. He was also a president of Unifrance. He was a member of the jury at the 1937 Venice Film Festival and the 1967 Cannes Film Festival.
