Dimitri Buchowetzski — Pola’s New Director (1924) 🇺🇸
For the first time in many months critical observers in Hollywood have stopped shaking their heads and shrugging their shoulders over the future of Pola Negri.
They feel at last that there is a possibility of her reawakening to be her one-time throbbing, thrilling self, as made known in “Passion,” “Gypsy Blood,” and other foreign productions. — This reason is her new director, a Russian who has but lately come from abroad.
His name, which looks terribly unpronounceable, is Dimitri Buchowetzski [Dmitriy Bukhovetskiy]. In appearance, Buchowetzski might, with largesse, be described as sufficiently prepossessing to be an actor. A trifle rotund perhaps, but flashing a handsome pair of eyes. As a matter of fact, he was on the stage in Russia, when he was younger and possibly less portly. He portrayed juveniles in the theater in Moscow. During the turbulent days of the revolution he fled from his native land, and that was when he became interested in film production — this in Germany, where he met Pola Negri.
Those who have viewed “Peter the Great” and “All for a Woman” can tell of his real achievements and art, and the majority of them contend that he is one of the ablest of the Europeans. Rex Ingram, in fact, made the statement once that he considered “All for a Woman” the best feature that he had seen from abroad.
Buchowetzski does, indeed, bring a fine sort of distinction with him from the lands across the sea. He is peculiarly and fascinatingly cultured, and has a love for the arts that is as naively exuberant as a child’s enjoyment of a wonderful set of playthings. He talks with zest upon music, drama and kindred things and, what is more, he is a person with such a tremendous sweep of energy and fire and temperament that he literally takes you off your feet.
It is easy, indeed, to realize that in assuming sway over such a tempestuously vivid personality as Pola Negri, he would be qualified, through his own fiery feeling, to cause her presence to flame anew. He has, no doubt, the power to bend and sway her too, through his resistless and restless sort of vigor, that American directors, accustomed to more formal and reserved means, might not have.
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Photo by: Eugene Robert Richee (1896–1972)
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, June 1924