ABSTRACT

When historians research the art of an actor whose most brilliant work took place in the theatre, they encounter a lack of information that they try to fill with eyewitness accounts, critical reviews, directorial explanations, and other evidence (such as letters, diaries, and memoirs) although in fact written evidence is an absence inside a presence. When an actor’s work is conserved on film, the evidence seems to be more real and factual, but this art form rests on the substitution of another absence for a presence. That is to say, the reality that the screen confers on the actor is spectral. The movie actor, in a comment by Luigi Pirandello picked up by Walter Benjamin in his reflections on aura in cinema, gives the impression of an “inexplicable emptiness.” This emptiness occurs because the actor’s body “evaporates and ceases to appear real,” turning into a depiction that “for a certain time trembles on the screen and then silently disappears” (qtd in Benjamin 1989: 1/2.489). This spectral substitution, however, only partly explains the loss of the charismatic aureole that surrounded Michael Chekhov on stage and was missing on the screen. Frequently, stage actors enjoy cult status in their homeland and are seen there not

simply as great professionals but also as charismatic figures, but do not enjoy similar recognition abroad. In this case charisma appears to be a local phenomenon that is too bound up with the national tradition and is lost in a different cultural environment. As far as Chekhov is concerned, the students and colleagues with whom he had direct contact were susceptible to his personal charm, whether it was in Germany, Austria, France, Latvia, England, or America. It was thus not emigration from one cultural environment to another that proved an obstacle, but rather the change of medium – the “emigration” from stage to screen. The specific nature of this “second emigration” of Chekhov’s is immediately apparent when one examines his roles in German cinema (Silhouette 2009: 261-74). Chekhov became a permanent émigré in 1928, spending the first two years of his

long nomadic life in Germany and playing three roles on the various stages of Max Reinhardt’s theatre in Vienna and in Berlin. He made his début in Vienna in the part of Skid in Artisten, the German version of George Watters’s and Arthur Hopkins’s Broadway musical Burlesque. Chekhov appeared in it 28 times from 10 November to

23 December 1928. In April 1929 Chekhov appeared on the Kammerspiele stage of the Deutsches Theater in Heinz Hilpert’s production of Osip Dymov’s play Jusik, playing the title role 20 times. Chekhov’s best-known role in Reinhardt’s theatre was in Fritz von Unruh’s play Phaea. He was quite disappointed with his work in it; he played the part of Nikolay Vladimirovich Orlov, a Russian émigré singer in Berlin who had been reduced to taking a role as an extra in a crowd scene. Chekhov appeared in the play 110 times between 13 June and 31 August 1930, this time on the main stage of the Deutsches Theater. He brought to this role his personal experience of working in the German film industry, but actually all his theatrical roles were linked in one way or another with parts in films. Chekhov acted in only three German films: The Fool of Love, 1929, Phantoms of

Happiness, 1930,1 and Troika, 1930. His work in German film is a striking example of non-recognition and non-acceptance by both German critics of the time and subsequent biographers. This was partly due to the fact that his big title role was in a silent film, in which his body lacked a voice with its powerful, charismatic impact. The two sound films he made, Troika and Phantoms of Happiness, were semi-silent, synchronized after the shooting with musical numbers from recordings, many silent scenes, and only a few with dialogue. Chekhov’s biographers ignore his work in German film, possibly because of the inaccessibility of copies, and possibly because of its short duration and episodic nature, but most likely because Chekhov himself paid little attention to it. Regarding his work on the German stage, he wrote in a letter to Andrey Bely that it was of the “stand and serve” variety, which he tolerated in the expectation of playing Shakespearean roles for Reinhardt, which did not happen (1986: 1.360). These experiences led him to discover the phenomenon of the split consciousness

in the actor: his “I” abandoned his body and regarded him (the body of the character) from without. This happened because he was acting in a foreign language. Chekhov himself singled out this moment:

I began. The few first phrases of Skid’s speech sounded strange to me: “Not at all gutteral. Not German […] that must be the Russische Stimme [Russian voice].” […] I observed Skid attentively. […] My consciousness had split in two. […] I was terrified. Making an effort, I came to myself again.