Art Director. Nationality: Russian. Born: Andrei Andrejev in St. Petersburg, 21 January 1887. Education: Studied architecture and painting at Academy of Fine Arts, Moscow. Career: Stage designer at Stanislavsky Theatre, Moscow, and for Max Reinhardt in Berlin and Vienna; 1923—first film designs; worked in France after the Nazis came to power; also worked in England. Died: In France, 1966.
Die Macht der Finsternis (C. Wiene); Raskolnikoff ( Crime and Punishment ) (R. Wiene)
Briefe, die ihn nicht erreichten (Zelnik); Das Geheimnis der alten Mamsell (Marzbach); Der Trödler von Amsterdam (Janson)
An der schönen blauen Donau (Zelnik); Die Försterchristel (Zelnik); Die Lachende Grille (Zelnik); Die Mühle von Sanssouci (Philippi); Uberflüssige Menschen (Rasumny); Der Veilchenfresser (Zelnik)
Alpentragödie (Land); Der goldene Abgrund (Bonnard); Im Luxuszug (Schönfelder); Die Spielerin (Cutts); Das tanzende Wien (Zelnik); Die Weber (Zelnik); Der Zigeunergaron (Zelnik)
Thérèse Raquin ( Shadows of Fear ) (Feyder); Rapa-Nui (Bonnard—short); Die Büchse der Pandora ( Pandora's Box ) (Pabst); Die Heilige und ihr Narr (Dieterle); Der Herzensphotograph (Reichmann); Heut tanzt Mariett (Zelnik); Der Ladenprinz (Schönfelder); Mary Lou (Zelnik); Wolga-Wolga (Tourjansky); Mein Herz ist eine jazzband (Zelnik); Zwei rote Rosen (Land)
Diane (Waschneck); Die Liebe der Brüder Rott (Waschneck); Meineid (Jacoby); Der Narr seiner Liebe (Tschechowa); Revolte im Erzeihungshaus (Asagaroff); Sprengbagger 1010 (Achaz-Duisberg)
Die letzte Kompagnie (Bernhardt)
Die Dreigroschenoper ( The Threepenny Opera ; The Beggar's Opera ) (Pabst); Ihre Majestät die Liebe (May); Liebeskommando (von Bolvary); Die lustigen Weiber von Wien (von Bolvary); Der Raub der Mona Lisa (von Bolvary)
Mirages de Paris (Ozep) (co); Don Quichotte ( Don Quixote ) (Pabst)
Volga en flammes (Tourjansky); Dans les rues (Trivas); Cette vieille canaille (Litvak)
Les Nuits moscovites (Granowsky); L'Or dans la rue (Bernhardt); The Dictator ( The Loves of a Dictator ) (Saville)
Les Yeux noirs (Tourjansky); Whom the Gods Love (Dean); Tarass Boulba (Granowsky); Le Golem (Duvivier)
Mayerling (Litvak); The Beloved Vagabond (Bernhardt)
La Citadelle du silence ( L'Herbier ); Tarakanowa (Ozep); Dreaming Lips (Czinner)
Le Drame de Shanghaï (Pabst); Lumières de Paris (Pottier); L'Esclave blanche (Sorkin and Pabst); Jeunes filles en détresse (Pabst)
Les Musiciens du ciel (Lacombe)
Paris-New York (Mirande and Lacombe); Elles étaient douze femmes (Lacombe)
Caprices (Joannon)
Le Dernier des six (Lacombe); La Symphonie pastorale (Christian-Jaque); L'Assassin habite au 21 (Clouzot); Simplet (Fernandel and Carlo-Rim); La Fausse Maitresse (Cayatte); La Main du diable (Tourneur); Picpus (Pottier)
Au Bonheur des dames (Cayatte); Le Corbeau ( The Raven ) (Clouzot); Mon Amour est près de toi (Pottier); La Ferme aux loups (Pottier); Pierre et Jean (Cayatte)
Le Dernier sou (Cayette—produced 1944)
Anna Karenina (Duvivier); The Winslow Boy (Asquith)
The Man Between (Reed); Melba (Milestone)
Mambo (Rossen)
Alexander the Great (Rossen)
Anastasia (Litvak)
Cinématographe (Paris), March 1982.
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Believing in creative freedom rather than academic reconstruction, André Andrejew fulfilled the 20th century's notion of the romantic, individualistic artist. The unusual titillated his imagination, and, much like the French Symbolists, Andrejew sought to reveal underlying truths through symbolic imagery.
Andrejew began his career as a film designer within the context of "German Expressionism," a movement obsessed with the outward depiction of man's internal traumas. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , designed by Hermann Warm, Walter Röhrig, and Walter Reimann, had emphasized this attitude through linear distortion and contrasts of lights and darks. However, Caligari remained highly twodimensional—an appropriate surface treatment for its superficial story line (although the original author's intent had greater ambitions than the final scenario). Andrejew expanded Caligari 's conception into three dimensions in Raskolnikoff with twisted, jabbed spaces and jutting, discordant diagonals from plane to plane. This physical depth paralleled the psychological depth of Dostoevsky's source novel. In particular, Andrejew emphasized the staircase (a frequent motif in German cinema) as representative of the main character's twisted and tormented state.
Mingling fantasy with social reality, Andrejew furnished an ambiguously evil world for Pabst's Pandora's Box . Images of pain, cruelty, greed, innocence, and sacrifice balance precariously under a cloud of omnipresent sexuality, as Lulu, the moderne , lower-class outsider, threatens the teetering, respectable, older, upper-class Europeans, destroying them and later herself. Lulu's apartment imprisons anxious Expressionist lines in pillowcases and wallpaper, domesticating them into plausibility. Her mantle of knickknacks (as obtrusive as those in a 15th-century oil painting) includes an oriental grotesque, an incense burner, a tiny glass figurine of a lamb, and an empty, nine-branched candelabra (Jewish menorah?). On one wall hangs a picture of Lulu as Pierrot the musician. Yet, beyond this idyll lies an alcove hiding a secret past. Lulu's husband's bedchamber contains a relief of a praying figure as intense as Romanesque church carvings or prints by Edward Munch. Each time the sculpture appears, it elicits new meanings. Another scene visually compares a stuffed alligator to the brutal Rodrigo threatening a morally drowning Lulu.
As critics began to condemn any strongly stated art direction as distracting, Andrejew slightly toned down his style. Nonetheless, he maintained his belief in the importance of intrinsic meaning in design.
—Edith C. Lee
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