Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (/ˈɡoʊɡəl, -ɡɔːl/;Russian: Никола́й Васи́льевич Го́голь, tr. Nikolay Vasilievich Gogol; IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈgogəlʲ]; Ukrainian: Мико́ла Васи́льович Го́голь, Mykola Vasyliovych Hohol; 31 March [O.S. 19 March] 1809 – 4 March [O.S. 21 February] 1852) was a Russian dramatist, novelist and short story writer of Ukrainian ethnicity. Russian and Ukrainian scholars debate whether or not Gogol was of their respective nationalities.

Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism and the grotesque ("The Nose", "Viy", "The Overcoat," "Nevsky Prospekt"). His early works, such as Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, were influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, Ukrainian culture and folklore. His later writing satirised political corruption in the Russian Empire (The Government Inspector, Dead Souls), leading to his eventual exile. The novel Taras Bulba (1835) and the play Marriage (1842), along with the short stories "Diary of a Madman", "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich", "The Portrait" and "The Carriage", round out the tally of his best-known works.

Viy (1967 film)

Viy (Spirit of Evil or Vii, Russian: Вий) is a 1967 horror film produced by Mosfilm and based on the Nikolai Gogol story of the same name.

Plot

Natalya Varley

Natalya Varley (Russian: Наталья Владимировна Варлей, born June 22, 1947) is a Soviet and Russian film and theater actress, RSFSR Meritorious Artist (1989).

Biography

Natalya Varley was born in Constanţa, Romania, a daughter of the sea captain Vladimir Viktorovich Varley, who was also a one-time City Council chairman (Mayor, in modern terms) of Murmansk where the family lived. One of his 19th century paternal ancestors was a Welsh jockey who (along with his brother) had been invited to Russia to manage a horse-breeding factory, married a Russian and settled there. Natalya's mother, Ariadna Sergeyevna Varley (nee Senyavina), a granddaughter of geologist Yevgeny Barbot de Marni, was of French and German origins, a distant relative to Alexey K. Tolstoy.

Natalya was an artistic child; she started writing poetry at the age of four, was fond of painting and studied music. In the late 1950s, as the family settled in Moscow, she entered the Tsvetnoy Boulevard Circus's Children Studio and made a quick progress there, which was all the more impressive, considering she'd been a sickly child and suffered from rheumatism-related heart disorder which for several years prevented her from taking sports at school. After graduating the State Circus and Entertainment Art college in 1965, Varley joined the Moscow Tsvetnoy Boulevard Circus troupe as an equilibrist.

Leonid Kuravlyov

Leonid Vyacheslavovich Kuravlyov (Russian: Леонид Вячеславович Куравлёв) (born October 8, 1936) is a Soviet/Russian actor and People's Artist of the RSFSR (1976).

Leonid Kuravlyov was born in Moscow in 1936. In 1941, Kuravlyov's mother was falsely accused and exiled to the Russian North, where they would spend several years until their return to Moscow. In 1955, Leonid Kuravlyov was accepted to the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography and began studying the art of acting.

Leonid Kuravlyov and Vasily Shukshin

Leonid Kuravlyov made his first appearance in a movie while he was still a student. In 1959 he played in the film There Will Be No Leave Today by his classmate Andrei Tarkovsky. In 1960, he played the role of a sailor Kamushkin in a historical movie Michman Panin (Warrant Officer Panin) directed by Mikhail Shveitzer. Simultaneously, Kuravlyov acted in Vasily Shukshin's degree work Iz Lebyazhyego soobshchayut (They report from Lebyazhiy). That same year, Kuravlyov graduated from VGIK and joined the Theater Studio of Film Actors. From that moment on, Leonid Kuravlyov played a few leading parts and incidental characters in a few movies. In 1961, Kuravlyov and Shukshin starred in a famous Soviet melodrama Kogda derevya byli bolshimi (When the Trees Were Tall) with Yuri Nikulin playing the leading part. Actor and film director Vasily Shukshin is considered to have been the one to widely introduce Leonid Kuravlyov to the general public. In 1964, he shot two films – Zhivyot takoy paren' (There Is Such a Lad) and Vash syn i brat (Your Son and Brother) – both starring Leonid Kuravlyov. Shukshin liked Kuravlyov's acting in these two movies so much that he would constantly offer him different roles in many of his projects. Kuravlyov, however, turned down each one of them because he did not wish to play clichéd characters.