Eldar Aleksandrovich Ryazanov (Russian:Эльдар Александрович Рязанов; 18 November 1927 – 30 November 2015) was aSoviet andRussian film director, screenwriter, poet, actor and pedagogue whose popular comedies, satirizing the daily life of theSoviet Union and Russia, are celebrated throughout theformer Soviet Union and formerWarsaw Pact countries.[1][2][3]
Eldar Aleksandrovich Ryazanov was born inSamara. His father, Aleksandr Semyonovich Ryazanov, was a diplomat who worked inTehran. His mother, Sofya Mikhailovna (née Shusterman), was of Jewish descent.[4]
In 1930, the family moved toMoscow, 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 thecorrectional labour camps.[5]
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 filmCarnival 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."[6] He won instant success, and began to release more films.
Ryazanov had an acuteischemic 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.[7]
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 since the 2014Revolution of Dignity.[8] A street in Moscow was named after him in 2017,[9] and a museum and memorial dedicated to his memory was opened on the site of his childhood home in Samara.
In his book "Nepoladki v russkom dome"Sergey Kara-Murza wrote that "Ryazanov and the artists close to him, consumed byanti-Soviet feeling, lovingly reflected and thereby in many ways created a certain social and spiritual world - and this world turned out to be possible only when it was surrounded and protected by the crude structures of the Soviet way of life."[10]
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