In 1914-1917 he studied at the
St. Petersburg Bekhterev Psychoneurological Research Institute, between 1917 and 1922 at the medical faculty of
Saratov State University. From 1917 he worked in Saratov in the arts department as professor and rector of the Higher theatrical art workshops. Since 1923 he was the director of
Vsevolod Meyerhold’s Theatre of the Revolution in Moscow, director and teacher of the Higher Pedagogical School of the
All-Russian Central Executive Committee in the Kremlin. Since 1924 he was the director at the studios
Goskino,
Sovkino,
Soyuzkino. Since 1936 he was director at the studio
Mosfilm. In 1925-1934 he taught at
VGIK as a senior lecturer. Room's best known film is
Bed and Sofa (1927) after a screenplay by
Lev Kuleshov and
Viktor Shklovsky. In the film, a woman who is married to a construction worker has an affair with their lodger. The film tracks the evolution of a housewife into a strong liberated woman, which was very unusual for its time. Another notable title is
The Ghost That Never Returns (1929) The first movie he directed was
The Vodka Chase in 1924. He directed the first talking picture in the Soviet Union, the 1930 documentary
The Plan for Great Works. The other films he directed were
Traitor (1926),
Ruts (1928),
Criminals (1933),
Squadron No. 5 (1939),
Invasion (1945),
In the Mountains of Yugoslavia (1946),
School for Scandal (1952),
The Garnet Bracelet (1964),
Late Flowers (1969), and
A Man Before His Time (1971). Cited in the German book
Texte zur Theorie des Films (Albersmeier 1998, p.304) [texts about theory of film]: "A. Room, declared opponent of the concept of
Sergei Eisenstein, postulated in his essay Moi kinoubezhdeniya (My beliefs of film) in: Soviet screen, 1926, m. 8, p. 5: Prior importance in film must be the living human... [in german: Vorrangige Bedeutung kommt im Film dem lebendigen Menschen zu...], exactly that what Eisenstein declined." ==Filmography==