Pyryev was born in
Kamen, 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 («Лес») and by
Sergei Eisenstein in the
Proletcult Theatre production
The Mexican. Pyryev also acted in Eisenstein's first short film ''
Glumov's Diary.
He debuted as a director in the age of silent film, with Strange Woman'' (Посторонняя женщина, 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 Samoylov), 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). Such films as
They Met in Moscow (1941),
Ballad of Siberia (1947) and
Cossacks of the Kuban (1949) have often been broadcast on national television and proved effective in showcasing the idealized Soviet way of life. The former, shown in the US as
They Met in Moscow, was the last film made in the
Soviet Union before the German invasion. The protagonists, a Russian swineherd and a Chechen shepherd (played by Ladynina and
Vladimir Zeldin) meet at the
All-Union Agricultural Exhibition and fall in love with each other. The movie is noted for a memorable score by
Isaak Dunayevsky and
Tikhon Khrennikov.
Cossacks of the Kuban, which launched the star of
Klara Luchko, presents a highly glamorized picture of life in a southern
kolkhoz. Following
Joseph Stalin's death, Pyryev turned his attention to adaptations. He produced two acclaimed adaptations of
Fyodor Dostoevsky's novels,
The Idiot (1958, starring
Yury Yakovlev) and
The Brothers Karamazov (1969), which was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and won him a Special Prize at the
6th Moscow International Film Festival. Pyryev died at the age of 66 in
Moscow. Since
The Brothers Karamazov was unfinished at the time, the film stars
Kirill Lavrov and
Mikhail Ulyanov are usually credited with having brought the project to a conclusion. His widow
Lionella Pyryeva, who took the part of Grushenka in
The Brothers Karamazov, went on to marry
Oleg Strizhenov. ==Praise==