Biography

Ivan Aleksandrovich Pyryev (17 November 1901 – 7 February 1968) was a Soviet-Russian film director and screenwriter remembered as the high priest of Stalinist cinema. He was awarded six Stalin Prizes (1941, 1942, 1946, 1946, 1948, 1951), served as Director of the Mosfilm studios (1954–57) and was, for a time, the most influential man in the Soviet motion picture industry.

Pyryev was born in Kamen-na-Obi, in the Tomsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Altai Krai, Russia). His early career included acting on stage directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold in The Forest and by Sergei Eisenstein in the Proletcult Theatre production The Mexican. Pyryev also acted in Eisenstein's first short film Glumov's Diary. Pyryev's early career included production jobs behind the camera, such as work for director Yuri Tarich. He débuted as a director in the age of silent film, with Strange Woman (1929).

During the 1930s and 1940s Pyryev rivaled Grigori Aleksandrov as the country's most successful director of musical comedies, all of which starred his wife Marina Ladynina. Even during wartime, when the Soviet film industry had been evacuated to Alma-Ata, Pyryev made popular and light-hearted features. In Six O'Clock after the War is Over the Romantic characters (played by Ladynina and Yevgeny Samoilov), when separated by war, arrange a date at 6 PM on the Victory Day, and the victory celebrations are shown towards the end of the film (which was released in November 1944).