Vestnik VGIK I Journal of Film Arts and Film StudiesVestnik VGIK I Journal of Film Arts and Film Studies2074-08322713-2471Eco-vector1455710.17816/VGIK1037-18Research ArticleVladimir Mayakovsky as a Film Actor: a “Star” or an Amateur?ProninAlexander A<p>Doctor in Philology, Associate Professor of TV Journalism</p>editor@vestnik-vgik.comSt. Petersburg State University1509201810371801072019Copyright © 2018, Pronin A.A.2018<p style="text-align: justify;">The article considers the activity of V.V. Mayakovsky as a film actor. In 1918 he starred in three films: <em>Not for Money Born, The Young Lady and the Hooligan, and Shackled by the Film, of which only one survived The Young Lady and the Hooligan.</em> This film was a success, and the reviewer of the magazine Rampa and life highlighted exactly Mayakovsky, who has made a very good impression and promises to be a very good typical actor.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Basing on the analysis of the film <em>The Young Lady and the Hooligan</em> and the testimonies of contemporaries, it is possible to identify the characteristic features of Mayakovsky's acting. He was a good object for cinema, cinematic sitter: a man with a characteristic appearance, with a certain, pronounced character. Mayakovsky's ability to save movements and not to invent deliberate gestures, bypassing the usual, machine, on the one hand, seemed to contradict the general aesthetics of silent cinema, coming from the expressiveness of gesture and facial expressions, but, on the other, it fits well into the tradition of pre-revolutionary Russian style, characterized by minimalist technique of playing of a Russian actor.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Thus Mayakovsky tries to bring in it more dynamics so, from the first shots in hands of the hero there is a cavalry whip with which he manipulates, gestures expressing an emotional state of the hero: twirls fingers (carelessness), knocks down a grass and branches (excitement or anger), breaks off a fraction (impatience). A separate attention deserves glance-as a special gesture, extremely important for dumb cinedrama. In <em>The Young Lady and the Hooligan</em> the Mayakovskys character often rather watches than performs something. But the most expressive is a direct look into the camera, and there are only two such gesture- images: the first in the scene of love confession in the classroom; the second in the scene of the death of the hero.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Thus Vladimir Mayakovsky could not become a professional film actor because of his organic impossibility to reincarnate, but his acting was not accidental because the desire to manifest himself to the world was part of his nature as an artist, and he could and played his own way. Today this type of behavior could be associated with that of a media person, like the writer Zakhar Prilepin, who also sometimes appears in films.</p>Mayakovskyactorsilent filmfilmgestureМаяковскийкиноактернемое кинофильмжест[Mayakovskij V.V.: pro et contra [Vladimir Mayakovsky: pro et contra]. T. 2. – SPb.: RHGA, 2013.][Velikij Kinemo. Katalog sohranivshihsya igrovyh fil'mov Rossii 1908–1919 [Great Cinema: Catalog the surviving films 1908–1919 Russia]. – M.: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2002.][“V tom, chto umirayu, ne vinite nikogo”? Sledstvennoe delo Mayakovskogo. Dokumenty. Vospominaniya sovremennikov [“Don’t blame anyone for dying”? The case of Mayakovsky. Documentation. Memoirs of contemporaries]. – M.: Ehllis Lak, 2005.][Kuleshov L. Iskusstvo kino [Art of cinema]. – M., 1929.][Mayakovskij v vospominaniyah sovremennikov [Mayakovsky in the memoirs of contemporaries]. – M.: GIHL, 1963.][Polyanovskij M. Mayakovskij kinoakter [Mayakovsky film actor]. – M.: Goskinoizdat, 1940.][Rampa i zhizn’ [Ramp and life], 1918. № 23, 19 maya.][Shklovskij V. Mayakovskij i kino [Mayakovsky and cinema] // Kino, 1937, 11 aprelya.][Fevral’skij A.V. Mayakovskij v kino [Mayakovsky and cinema]. – M.; L., 1937.][Civ’yan YU. Na podstupah k karpalistike: dvizhenie i zhest v literature, iskusstve i kino [On the outskirts of cabalistic: movement and gesture in literature, art and cinema]. – M.: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2010.]