Mikhail Romm

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 957-959. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

Mikhail Romm was born in 1901, into a Russian-Jewish family, in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, Russia.

He served in the Red Army in 1918-21 as an Inspector of the Special Forces for Food Supplies. He was in charge of confiscations of bread and food from the wealthier farmers (kulaks) in Central Russia. Romm later was avoiding any discussions regarding this painful memories, though he used his experience in the films about Lenin.

He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Arts and Technology as a sculptor (1925), where he studied under Anna Golubkina. Worked as a sculptor and interpreter.

In 1928-30 he worked at Institute for extra-scholastic studies as researcher on the theory of Cinematography.

From 1931 he worked at Mosfilm Studios, where he made his first film 'Pyshka' (1934).

His next film '13' (1936) was considered the first Soviet "eastern" (a Soviet answer to "western"). During the years of "Great Terror" under Joseph Stalin Romm made two features and a documentary about Lenin.

His cinematographer Boris Volchek (Lenin in October (1937), aka Lenin in October) later taught the Parajanov: The Last Spring (1992) helmer Mikhail Vartanov at the legendary Russian film school VGIK.

His criminal drama 'Murder on the Dante Street' (1956) was the first film for the great Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy.

After an eight-year brake Romm made his 'Nine Days in One Year' (1962). It was an excellent psychological drama about the life and death of nuclear physicists. After the political shifts during and after the "Thaw", started by Nikita Khrushchev, Romm devoted his talent to documentary material. He worked like a sculptor, cutting through the massive Nazi archives of documentaries in Germany.

His work was rewarded with an astounding result - 'Tiumph over violence' (1965) in which he also was a narrator.