Nikolai Nikolaevich Figurovsky (; 7 December 1923 – 14 June 2003) was a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

film director, screenwriter, writer and professor at VGIK. Honored Artist of the Byelorussian SSR (1964).Cinema: Encyclopedic Dictionary // main editor Sergei Yutkevich (1987). — Moscow: Soviet Encyclopedia, pp. 447—448

Biography

Nikolai Figurovsky was born in Chukhloma (modern-day

Kostroma Oblast Kostroma Oblast () is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Its administrative center is the types of inhabited localities in Russia, city of Kostroma and its population as of the Russian Census (2021), 2021 Census i ...

of Russia) into a family of a village schoolteacher Nikolai Mikhailovich Figurovsky who came from a long generation of

Russian Orthodox The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; ;), also officially known as the Moscow Patriarchate (), is an autocephaly, autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christian church. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The Primate (bishop), p ...

priests. His grandfather Mikhail Ivanovich Figurovsky, a village priest, was arrested and sentenced to death in 1937 during the

Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

.''Nikolai Figurovsky (2009)''. I Remember... Autobiographical Notes and Memories. — Moscow: Janus-K, pp. 31—68 His brother Yuri Figurovsky (1925—2005), a constructor of

radiolocation Radiolocation, also known as radiolocating or radiopositioning, is the process of finding the location of something through the use of radio waves. It generally refers to passive, particularly radar—as well as detecting buried cables, wate ...

equipment, served as the head of the

Tikhomirov Scientific Research Institute of Instrument Design JSC V.V. Tikhomirov Scientific Research Institute of Instrument Design (, , NIIP) is a joint stock company, one of the Russian enterprises in the development of weaponry control systems for fighter planes and mobile medium range anti-aircraft ...

between 1962 and 1969, while his cousin-uncle Nikolai Alexandrovich Figurovsky (1901—1986) was a prominent Soviet chemist and a professor at the MSU Faculty of Chemistry; he also had family ties with the Russian space scientist

Anatoli Blagonravov Anatoly Arkadevich Blagonravov (; – 4 February 1975) was a Soviet engineer in the Soviet space program and later a diplomat. He represented the Soviet Union on the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). He work ...

. During the 1930s his family moved to the Ternovka village of the Central Black Earth Oblast where he finished the secondary school in 1941. He served in the

signal corps A signal corps is a military branch, responsible for military communications (''signals''). Many countries maintain a signal corps, which is typically subordinate to a country's army. Military communication usually consists of radio, telephone, ...

during the

Great Patriotic War The Eastern Front, also known as the Great Patriotic War (term), Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union and its successor states, and the German–Soviet War in modern Germany and Ukraine, was a Theater (warfare), theatre of World War II ...

. After the war he entered the director's faculty at VGIK, the course led by Igor Savchenko which he finished in 1951. As a student he played a small part in '' The Young Guard'' movie directed by Sergei Gerasimov. Between 1953 and 1984 he worked at

Mosfilm Mosfilm (, ''Mosfil’m'' , initialism and portmanteau of Moscow Films) is a film studio in Moscow which is among the largest and oldest in the Russian Federation and in Europe. Founded in 1924 in the USSR as a production unit of that nation's fi ...

, Belarusfilm, Uzbekfilm, Gorky and Dovzhenko Film Studios, directing six films and writing 30 screenplays. Among his famous works were two movies directed by Lev Kulidzhanov: the 1961 drama '' When the Trees Were Tall'' which entered the 1962 Cannes Film Festival and ''

Crime and Punishment ''Crime and Punishment'' is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was first published in the literary journal '' The Russian Messenger'' in twelve monthly installments during 1866.

'' (1970) based on the

novel A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ...

Fyodor Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian and world literature, and many of his works are considered highly influent ...

which was selected for the 31st Venice International Film Festival and awarded the Vasilyev Brothers State Prize of the RSFSR in 1971. For the latter Figurovsky also proposed an idea of an extended six- or seven-part TV version to be released simultaneously, but this was too ahead of its time. He directed another two notable movies at Belarusfilm: the 1954 spy film '' Children of the Partisan'' which became the first

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

ian color motion picture and the 1958 war drama ''The Clock Has Stopped at Midnight'' (1958) which turned into one of the Soviet box office leaders of 1959 (8th place with 34.8 mln viewers). In 1970 Figurovsky also headed the screenwriting workshop at VGIK; among his students were the screenwriter Yuri Arabov and the Russian producer, founder of the CTB Film Company Sergey Selyanov. He was the author of two textbooks on screenwriting as well as a novel ''The Aquarius Sign'' (1985) about the

intelligentsia The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the i ...

in the pre-revolutionary Russia. A member of the Union of Soviet Writers since 1962. He died on 14 June 2003 and was buried at the Vostryakovsky Cemetery in Moscow.

Family

*First wife (1951–1958) — Emma Trifovovna Figurovskaya (née Pavlikova), an economist, also a VGIK graduate. They had a son Yuri Figurovsky (1951—2011) and a daughter Elena Kosheleva (born 1956). *Second wife (1959–1961) — an actress Rita Ivanovna Gladunko (1929–1996) who left him for Viktor Avdyushko.Maria Chernitsina.
Boris Tokarev and Rita Gladunko. Two captains
' interview at the Story Caravan magazine, April 2016 (in Russian) *Third wife (1963–2003) — an actress and a writer Valentina Pavlovna Kutsenko (born 1930). They had a son Nikolay Figurovsky (born 1966).

Selected filmography

Notes

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Figurovsky, Nikolai 1923 births 2003 deaths Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography alumni Academic staff of the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography Russian film directors Soviet film directors Soviet male writers Soviet military personnel of World War II Soviet screenwriters Soviet male screenwriters 20th-century Russian screenwriters Russian male screenwriters 20th-century Russian male writers Recipients of the State Hamza Prize