Description
Extremely rare vintage gelatine-silver print representing Ivan Mosjoukine surrounded by members of Russian company Films Albatros in 1925.
"In 1920, the film production company that would later be known as Albatros moved into the old Pathé studio in the Paris suburb of Montreuil. It consisted of a group of plucky Russians—all accomplished film professionals— who had fled their native country via Constantinople in reaction to the Bolshevik Revolution and the protracted civil war that followed. The magnificent talent gathered in Montreuil—Ivan Mosjoukine, Alexandre Volko , Nathalie Lissenko, Ivan Lochako , Yakov Protazanov, Viatcheslav Tourjansky—competed successfully with the American cinema in Europe still reeling from the most ruinous war in history. Alexandre Kamenka assumed the manager’s reins in 1922, and by 1924, as many of the principals were lured away, he began hiring major French directors like Jean Epstein, René Clair, Marcel L’Herbier, and Jacques Feyder. Mosjoukine, an actor with an electrifying onscreen presence who was catapulted to international stardom with Le Braisier ardent and Kean, was himself lured to Hollywood by Universal Pictures— where he made only one film, Surrender, in spite of a five-year contract."
(Films Albatros, The Museum of Modern Art, 2013)
After two fires at the Cinémathèque Française, the entire archive of the Albatros company was destroyed. This photo from the collection of Alexandre Trauner is of any rarity.
Vintage silver print, 8 x 10 inches