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Mikhail Yurievich Bleiman (born 19 May 1904, Rostov-on-Don — 3 December 1973, Moscow) was a Russian and Soviet screenwriter and film critic. ^[1]

Life and career

Bleiman studied history and philology in Rostov between 1920 and 1923 and at the Valerii Briusov Higher Institute for Literature and Art [ ru] in Moscow in 1923–1924. He worked as a journalist before specializing in screenplays. Bleiman’s first two scripts were made into satirical shorts: History of an Advance Payment (Istoriia odnogo avansa, 1924), a morality tale about the dangers of alcohol abuse, and The Adventures of Vanka Gvozd (Pokhozhdeniia Vanki Gvozdia, 1924), a mockery of the Orthodox Church. Both were produced by a Komsomol-based company in Bleiman’s hometown Rostov-on-the Don and directed by Manuel Bolshintsov [ ru] (1902–1954). In 1924, together with M.V. Bolshintsov, A.I. Grisenko, S.I. Brumer and other Rostov Komsomol members, he created the only non-governmental Komsomol film studio in Russia, Yuvkinokomol. At this film studio, according to his script, in 1926 his first full-length (7 parts, 2289 meters) feature military adventure film "Order no. ..." about the exploits of young Rostov revolutionaries was shot. ^{[2] [3]}

Bleiman’s most well-known work is the screenplay for Fridrikh Ermler’s The Great Citizen (1937–1939, co-authored with Bolshintsov), a reflection of Stalinist strategies within the Bolshevik Party in the 1930s, showing Joseph Stalin’s struggle against the “ leftist and rightist oppositions". ^[1]

He was one of the creators of the script of the cult film " The Scout's Feat", for which he was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1948.

Bleiman was also successful with war dramas, authoring or co-authoring the scripts for Yuli Raizman’s Moscow Sky (1944), Leonid Lukov’s It Happened in the Donbas (1945), and most notably for Boris Barnet’s Secret Agent (with [[Konstantin Isaev]] [ ru]), a spy film that won both the director and the screenwriters Stalin Prizes. Bleiman was accused of “ formalism” in the early 1930s. In 1948–1949, despite his loyal service to Stalin and the Communist Party, he became one of the major targets of the anti-Semitic campaign “against cosmopolitanism.” Among his noteworthy later screenwriting efforts are the Civil War story Restless Youth (Trevozhnaia molodost’, 1954)—the directing debut of Aleksandr Alov and Vladimir Naumov — and a hugely popular espionage dilogy, The Road to 'Saturn' (1967) and The End of Saturn (1968). ^[1]

He was also a prolific film critic who regularly published his views on ideological and aesthetic aspects of Soviet cinema. ^[1]

Filmography

• "Order no.(number)..." (1926)
• Mutiny (1928)
• My Motherland (1933)
• Journey to Arzrum (1936)
• The Great Citizen (1938)
• Nebo Moskvy (1944)
• It Happened in the Donbas (1945)
• Secret Agent (The Scout's Feat) (1947)
• Victorious Return (1947)
• Three Encounters (1948)
• The Road to 'Saturn' (1967)

Literature

• Sergei Yutkevich (1987). Encyclopedic Dictionary of Cinema. Moscow: Soviet Encyclopedia. p. 96.
• Mikhail Bleiman (1973). О кино - свидетельские показания [About Cinema - A Witnesses Account]. Moscow: Iksusstvo.

References

External links

• Mikhail Bleiman at IMDb