Sergei Fedorovich Bondarchuk (Russian: Серге́й Фё́дорович Бондарчу́к, 25 September 1920 – 20 October 1994) was a Soviet Russian film actor, writer, and director of Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Serbian descent.
He was conscripted into the Great Patriotic War, and was discharged in 1946, after which he worked on films. He was president of the Union of Cinematographers from 1970 to 1986. His daughter Natalia Bondarchuk played the role of Hari in the Andrei Tarkovsky film Solaris, his other daughter Alyona Bondarchuk is also an actress, and his son Fyodor Bondarchuk directed the 2005 war film 9th Company.
Filmography (selected):
- Dream Of A Cossack (1951, dir. Yuli Raizman) was his first starring role.
- Taras Shevchenko (1952, dir. Alexander Alov, Vladimir Naumov, Igor Savchenko) won him the honor of People's Artist of the USSR.
- Othello (1955, dir. Sergei Yutkevich) entered Cannes, and it was on the set of this film that Bondarchuk met his wife.
- Fate of a Man, aka Destiny of a Man (1959) was his directorial debut, and won him many awards.
- War and Peace (1965-7) is his most famous film. A true epic, the film is about ten hours long, was released in four parts, and would have cost over a billion dollars in modern money. Bondarchuk not only directed, but starred as Pierre, and won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film, one of the few Russian films to do so.
- The Battle of Neretva (1969, dir. Veljko Bulajić), International Coproduction, Epic Movie, All-Star Cast
- Waterloo (1970) was his first English-language film, and was a critical success but commercial failure.
- They Fought for Their Country (1975)
- Boris Godunov (1986) starred Bondarchuk as the tsar, his daughter Alyona as Princess Xenia, and his son Fyodor as Prince Fyodor.
Tropes about or used by Bondarchuk:
- Battle Epic: Waterloo had a cast of 17,000 extras; it was said that during fielding Bondarchuk commanded the seventh-largest army in the entire world.
- Costume Porn
- Epic Movie: Became famous for directing big sweeping epics, and specifically big, sweeping war movies.
- The Oner
- Romance on the Set
- Scenery Porn
