Film director Mikhail Kalik: biography, movies, personal life and interesting facts

For people born in the post-revolutionary and revolutionary times, it was very difficult to live, let alone become famous personalities. Film director Mikhail Kalik, a Jew by nationality, went through all circles of hell in order to achieve a position in society. He changed the whole history of Russian cinema, making it more poetic. It is about his difficult life will be discussed in our article.

The history of childhood

Now almost all children grow in warmth, comfort, do not need anything. In the twenties of the last century, Russia was blazing with hundreds of lights, so-called "enemies of the people and new power" were killed and brought to suicide. Entire families were sent to distant links. In one such reference, Mikhail Kalik was born, whose biography began in the Arkhangelsk camp for the expelled.

He was born on January 29, 1927, when the well-known events were in full swing. His father, once an actor of a children's and puppet theater, was accused of something and sent his entire family to exile in Arkhangelsk. The mother of the future film director was from a very wealthy family, she once graduated from an elite gymnasium, she knew a lot of languages. But with all this knowledge, the woman had to exchange more or less valuable things for food for her family, then mastered the typewriter. She with all her heart hated the new power, which also hated all the wealthy in the tsarist times of people and their descendants.

When Moses (the real name of Kalika) turned a year, the family was released from exile and moved to Moscow.

Love of movies

In 1943, in the midst of the Great Patriotic War, young Mikhail Kalik was in the Alma-Ata evacuation and accidentally witnessed the creation of the film. Walking past the set where Ivan the Terrible was shooting Ivan Eisenstein, the boy heard a phrase from one of the actresses that the lady is a Jewess. The woman was glad that at least the tsar was not a Jew.

Kalik then thought about the opportunity to learn Russian culture, to become a part of it. In the soul of the guy sunk the whole site for filming, and he wanted to just shoot his own films.

Times were difficult, especially for Jews, but Mikhail Kalik ventured to enter VGIK.

Heavy students

As Michael Kalik himself recalls, it was not so difficult to enter the institute as to experience during the training the Stalinist repressions, which were directed at all. The young Jew immediately fell under the vigilant supervision of the administration of the institute. He witnessed how the Stalinist trial of Jewish critics, the so-called cosmopolitans, carried out the arrest of Jewish cultural figures.

He himself also became an "enemy of the people" and in 1951, among several more students, was arrested. The guys were accused of an "anti-Soviet terrorist organization," and of Kalika in the Zionist activity. He did not refute the latter, considering himself a true Jew.

Later Kalik in the biographical film Vinokura showed how he was taken away, wringing his hands, shaving at the bald, as if condemning to death.

The experience of Stalin's camps

Guys who once studied at VGIK, were brought to the military court of the Moscow MGB. They did not expect mercy, because these halls were usually brought to the wall, and shot. But the children, in exceptional cases, were appointed "quarter" of the severe Siberian camps and sent to Ozerlag, one of the most terrible camps, located near Taishet.

Mikhail Kalik, the director in the future, says that hundreds of the hardiest men died around him every day, and he, young and not so strong, could survive. The director recalls that to survive that time he was helped by an optimistic attitude. Even sitting in a solitary, damp and dark cell, he managed not to lose heart. One of the guards took pity on the boy and gave him a whole box of matches. The future director burned them slowly, and while the lights were on, they made plans for the future.

After passing through six prisons and the Lefortovo special corps, he made a feature film "And the wind returns" in 1991, in which he gave a few minutes to the truth about those camps. The plot was very believable, and one day French filmmakers asked him to sell a few minutes of his film so that they could use this instead of the unencumbered documentary information.

Michael Kalik, whose films store his most terrible memories, jokes that the Siberian camps gave him great experience as a director, and he had to be in them to have the necessary information in the future.

Kalik returned home fully rehabilitated in 1954 and already in 1958 continued to study for the director.

Kalika's style

Each film made by this director differs in a special style. Kalik's masterpieces are artistic, but each of them is filled with such plausibility that even in silent scenes we see and hear the truth. Lakes, mountains and the sea, shot by Mikhail Naumovich, are particularly vivid.

In 1960, the director made the film "Lullaby". After watching this tape, Furtseva Catherine (Minister of Culture of those times) came to full delight. This film masterpiece was approved by the Goskino for screening at the Venice Film Festival, but did not get there, as there were difficulties in the bureaucracy, and it was shown almost secretly out of the competition.

Kalik's style is special, his films are filled with the harmony of nature and man. There is nothing superfluous in them, even birds sing, and the water rustles at the right moments. The actors' play is set so that even turning the head is not accidental. Everything is thought out, all poetic. Mikhail Kalik does not idealize his films. In them he shows life as it sees it: death is something terrible, there can be nothing more beautiful than a child's laughter, like the sincerity of tears.

Difficulties of the former prisoner

Those were the times when you could not even think otherwise. Everything new and unknown was perceived as a possible threat to the entire USSR. Mikhail Kalik, whose films were viewed several times even by the Chekists before the publication, were vigorously discussed. They were criticized, sometimes called anti-Soviet, in which there is a secret meaning, because they were removed by a former prisoner and "enemy of the people", but there are no "enemies of the people"!

In defense of his ward, one of Kalik's mentors, Sergey Yutkevich , spoke . He said that in the films of a talented director there is nothing wrong. Mikhail Naumovich, only accidentally shot, was completely rehabilitated, which means he is completely innocent, and convicted of a big mistake!

Kalik Mikhail Naumovich: Filmography

M. Kalik, returning from the harsh camps, still managed to graduate from VGIK, gain experience, working as an assistant director, and make several own films:

• "Ataman Codr";
• "The Youth of Our Fathers";
• "Lullaby";
• "Man goes after the sun"
• "Good-bye, boys";
• "Be in love";
• "Price";
• "Three and one";
• "And the wind returns."

Also, Mikhail Naumovich himself was the writer of several of these films.

Now this director is ninety years old. He lives in Israel, and is always happy to talk with people about his life, about cinema. He has not lost humanity in all the difficult years of his life, but only loved people and nature more. He was not broken by the harsh camps, and he is still the most optimistic person!