Sergey Filippov


Sergey Nikolayevich Filippov was a Soviet and Russian film and stage actor and comedian, best known for his parts in films Adventures of Korzinkina, The Night Patrol and the adaptation of Ilf and Petrov's classic The Twelve Chairs, which granted him the People's Artist of the RSFSR title in 1974.

Biography

Filippov was born in Saratov. His father was a factory turner, his mother a dressmaker. Expelled from school for bad behaviour, he tried several jobs before joining a ballet studio, which in 1929 sent him to Moscow for further education.
Filippov enrolled into the recently formed Popular Music and Circus college which he graduated in 1933 to join the Moscow Ballet and Opera Theatre troupe. The heart problem forced Filippov to drop out, though; soon he found himself in the Saint Petersburg Comedy Theatre, led by Nikolay Akimov, where he became one of the leading actors.

Career in film

In 1937 Sergey Filippov made his debut on big screen, playing a Finnish soldier in For Soviet Motherland. 1939-1940 saw Filippov cast in several major movies, playing an enemy saboteur, provision store wrecker in Kozintsev and Trauberg's The Vyborg Side, a railroad worker in Arinka by Kosheverova and Muzykant, a sailor anarchist in Sergei Yutkevich's Yakov Sverdlov. Both directors and critics praised Filippov's improvisational talent as well as plasticity and physical strength, which allowed him to perform dangerous stunts with ease.
The cultural climate in the late-1941 USSR was hardly conducive for eccentric comedy, yet Klimenty Mints's Adventures of Korzinkina with Yanina Zhejmo in the lead, became hugely popular. Filippov's part was small but unforgettable. Sergey Yutkevich in one of his articles called the actor 'an ideal buffoon'.
In the 1940s Filippov created a gallery of crooks, loafers and eccentrics on screen. Well-versed in the history of film, he never copied his favourite comics. "I usually play the Soviet people, my contemporaries, so in each character I look for a social motif," he once said. One of his best-known parts of the time was that of a crooked shop director Polzikov in Night Patrol. Mid-1950s saw another rise in Filippov's popularity. His parts were small but memorable: silly and arrogant Almazov in The Tiger Trainer, absurdly dull Znanie lecturer in Eldar Ryazanov's Carnival Night, two-faced official Komarinsky in The Girl Without Address. In retrospect critics deplored the unadventurous way Filippov's comical gift had been exploited by directors, who often used his very presence to save otherwise mediocre scenes or films. According to actress Lyubov Tishchenko, Filippov's major grievance in his latter years was never having received a tragic role he was craving for. "I even cried as I learned that it was Yuri Nikulin who'd got the lead in When the Trees Were Tall", he once reportedly said.
In 1965 Filippov underwent a brain tumor removal. He continued to work with the same fervent zeal, though. In 1971, he starred as Kisa Vorobyaninov, next to Archil Gomiashvili's Ostap Bender in Leonid Gaidai's highly popular adaptation of Ilf and Petrov's The Twelve Chairs. This proved to be the peak of his career. In 1974 the actor was awarded the People's Artist of the RSFSR title.

Death

In the 1980s Filippov's health began to decline. After his second wife, Antonina Golubeva, who was thirteen years his senior, died in 1989, he was left alone, disabled and destitute. Filippov died of lung cancer on or around 19 April 1990, aged 77. His body was not discovered until two weeks later. Lenfilm refused to subsidise any funeral service and it was Aleksandr Demyanenko who personally collected the sum needed. Filippov was interred in Saint Petersburg Severnoye Cemetery.

Private life

Filippov's first wife was the ballet dancer Alevtina Gorinovich, with whom he fathered a son, Yuri Sergeyevich Filippov. In the early 1950s, soon after his first marriage ended in divorce, Filippov remarried, to Antonina Golubeva, a writer of children's books.

Filmography

  • The Defense of Volotchayevsk as partisan
  • The Vyborg Side as storehouse wrecker
  • Yakov Sverdlov as sailor anarchist
  • Member of the Government as saboteur
  • Musical Story as Babashkin
  • We from the Urals as Andrei Stepanovich
  • Kashchey the Immortal as executioner
  • Hello Moscow! as Semyon Semyonovich Brykin
  • A Noisy Household as Krauss
  • Cinderella as Corporal
  • Light over Russia as speculator
  • The Boys from Leningrad as jealous husband seeing off his wife in the port
  • Did We Meet Somewhere Before as unhappy photographer client
  • Tamer of Tigers as Kazimir Almazov
  • Twelfth Night as Fabian the servant
  • Carnival Night as Comrade Nekadilov, lecturer
  • Different Fortunes as Kostya, Roshchin's driver
  • Honeymoon as Sergey Nikolayevich Fyodorov, ferryman
  • Trista let tomu... as monk
  • The Girl Without an Address as Vasily Nikodimych Komarinsky
  • Gutta-percha Boy as doorman Prokhor
  • Street Full of Surprises as guard
  • A Girl with Guitar as Fyodor Fyodorovich Mamin-Skvortsovsky
  • The Unamenables as policeman
  • Be Careful, Grandma! as Innokenty Prokhorovich "Kesha" Prokhorov
  • Absolutely Seriously as almanac presenter
  • How Robinson Was Created as writer Moldavantsev / Robinson Crusoe
  • Cherry Town as neighbor Mylkin
  • Velká cesta as mayor
  • The Serf Actress as Yelpidifor manager
  • Summer is Over as Nikolai Yerofeyevich Bulyshev
  • Little Hare as Boris Mikhailovich, theater director
  • The Cook as market thief
  • The New Adventures of the Elusive Avengers as Koshkin the apothecary
  • The Snow Maiden as Bermyata
  • Don't Grieve as Eros the barber
  • Shadow as Prime minister
  • The Twelve Chairs as Ippolit Matveyevich "Kisa" Vorobyaninov
  • Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future as Swedish ambassador
  • Tsarevich Prosha as Chieftain of robbers
  • It Can't Be! as singer at wedding
  • The Blue Bird as Pleasure of Not Understanding
  • How Ivanushka the Fool Travelled in Search of Wonder as overseas doctor
  • Incognito from St. Petersburg as Osip, Khlestakov's servant
  • Late Meeting as Sergey Nikolayevich
  • Die Fledermaus as forester / waiter
  • The Nightingale as senior adviser
  • Borrowing Matchsticks as Hyvärinen
  • The Donkey's Hide as courtier
  • In the Old Rhythms as Sergey Gennadyevich, chief of militsiya
  • Sportloto-82 as station chief
  • And Then Came Bumbo... as ringmaster
  • Dangerous for Your Life! as gentle visitor
  • The Tale about the Painter in Love as chief sage
  • Heart of a Dog as Preobrazhensky's patient
  • Private Detective, or Operation Cooperation as angry old man