Herbert Rappaport (1908–1983), known in the
Soviet Union as Gerbert Moritsevich Rappaport, was an
Austrian-
Soviet screenwriter and film director.[1]
Rappaport was born in 1908 in
Vienna,
Austria-Hungary, to Jewish parents from
Lemberg (now
Lviv, Ukraine).[2] From 1927 to 1929 he studied law at
University of Vienna. Rappaport worked as screenwriter, music editor, and assistant director in Austria, Germany, and the United States from 1928 onward. During the early 1930s he worked as an assistant to
Georg Wilhelm Pabst. In 1936 he was officially invited to the Soviet Union to internationalize the
Soviet Cinema which he accepted and spent the following 40 years working as a filmmaker there.
Among Rappaport's best known films is an adaptation of
Dmitri Shostakovich's Cheryomushki ("Cherry Town") (1963).
In 2008 the first workshow
[1] was initiated outside Russia by the Austrian Filmmuseum and SYNEMA-Gesellschaft für Film und Medien, showing about half of his films.
Filmography
Professor Mamlok (Профессор Мамлок) /
Professor Mamlock (1938); with Adolf Minkin
Gost (Гость) / A Guest (1939); with Adolf Minkin
Muzykalnaya istoriya (Музыкальная история) /
Musical Story (1940); with Aleksandr Ivanovsky
Vozdushnyy izvozchik (Воздушный извозчик) /
Taxi to Heaven (1943)