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Eldar Aleksandrovich Ryazanov (18 November 1927 – 30 November 2015) was a Soviet and Russian film director, screenwriter, poet, actor and pedagogue whose popular comedies, satirizing the daily life of the Soviet Union and Russia, are celebrated throughout the former Soviet Union and former Warsaw Pact countries.
Biography
Eldar Aleksandrovich Ryazanov was born in Samara. His father, Aleksandr Semyonovich Ryazanov, was a diplomat who worked in Tehran. His mother, Sofya Mikhailovna, was of Jewish descent.
In 1930, the family moved to Moscow, and soon his parents divorced. He was then raised by his mother and her new husband, Lev Mikhailovich Kopp. In 1937 his father was arrested by the Stalinist government and subsequently served 18 years in the correctional labour camps.
Ryazanov began to create films in the early 1950s. In 1955, Ivan Pyryev, then a major force in the Soviet film industry, suggested to him to begin work on his film Carnival Night. At first, Ryazanov refused, as he wanted to make "serious films", but then was convinced to begin, as Pyryev believed that "anybody could shoot a melodrama, but only a few can create good comedy. He won instant success, and began to release more films.
He was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1984, and received the USSR State Prize in 1977. He won the Nika Award for Best Director in 1991 for the film Promised Heaven.
Among his most famous films are Carnival Night (1955), Hussar Ballad (1962), Beware of the Car (1966), The Irony of Fate (1975), Office Romance (1977), The Garage (1980), A Railway Station for Two (1982) and A Cruel Romance (1984). Ryazanov's main genre was tragicomedy.
Illness and death
Ryazanov had an acute ischemic stroke in November 2014. He was admitted to a Moscow hospital on 21 November 2015 due to shortness of breath. He died around midnight on 30 November 2015, of heart and lung failure, at the age of 88.
Legacy
Ryazanov was one of the most successful film directors of the Soviet Union, and his films are still well-known in the post-USSR landscape. The Irony of Fate is still aired every December 31 in most post-USSR countries except for Ukraine. A street in Moscow was named after him in 2017, and a museum and memorial dedicated to his memory was opened on the site of his childhood home in Samara.
