Valéry Inkijinoff

Known for ActingBorn 1895-03-25Died 1973-09-26Bokhan, Irkutsk governorate, Russian Empire

Valéry Inkijinoff (Russian: Валерьян (Валерий) Иванович Инкижинов; 25 March 1895 – 26 September 1973) was a French actor of Russian-Buryat origin. His strong facial features made him a favourite villain of French cinema for exotic adventure films and crime movies. Inkijinoff was born to a Christian Buryat father and a Russian mother in Irkutsk gubernia. He studied at the Polytechnical Institute of Saint Petersburg and was for a time one of the resident actors of an imperial theater of this city. At the beginning of his career in Russia, he appeared first as stuntman in a few movies and then as director and as actor. His major lead role during the Russian part of his career is The Son in Storm Over Asia by Vsevolod Pudovkin in 1928, a major Soviet propaganda film about a fictional British consolidation of Mongolia. He was also an actor in the troop of Vsevolod Meyerhold and was then appointed as director of the movie and theater school of Kiev in Ukraine. In 1930, while in France on a European tour, he refused to return to the USSR. According to Boris Shumyatsky, after Stalin learned Inkijinoff had never returned in 1934, said: "Too bad that the man escaped. Now he, probably, is dying to come back but, alas, too late." He starred in 2 movies while living in the Soviet Union, and contrary to Stalin's assumption, Inkijinoff became immensely popular in Europe, arguably the most successful Soviet actor abroad, starring in a total of 44 French, British, German, and Italian films. In France he frequently played the part of Asian villains. His most active period was in the thirties, when he appeared in Les Bateliers de la Volga and the G. W. Pabst film Le drame de Shanghai. He played for Fritz Lang in 1959, in Der Tiger von Eschnapur and its sequel Das indische Grabmal, in which he played the role of the high priest Yama. In 1965, Philippe de Broca cast him as Monsieur Goh, the wise but scary Chinese who guarantees to the Jean-Paul Belmondo character a certain death in Les tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine. His last movie was with Brigitte Bardot and Claudia Cardinale, where he played the role of Indian chief Spitting Bull in Les pétroleuses. He was a great friend of Charles Dullin and Louis Jouvet, and had a long career in French theater, appearing for instance in Marie Galante by Jacques Deval. He died at his home in Brunoy, Essonne, France, aged 78. Source: Article "Valéry Inkijinoff" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.Read more

Movies & web series

Man Wants to Live

Les Bateliers de la Volga

Rasplata

La Renégate

My Uncle from Texas

The Last Four on Santa Cruz

The Rebel Gladiators

The Doctor of Stalingrad

Up to His Ears

The Last Adventure

Mata Hari's Daughter

O.S.S. 117: Mission to Tokyo

Street Without Joy

The Triumph of Michael Strogoff

Corinna Darling

Journey to the Lost City

The Wife of General Ling

License to Kill

The Shanghai Drama

Samson and the 7 Miracles of the World

The Tiger of Eschnapur

Michael Strogoff

The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse

Storm Over Asia

Volga in Flames

The Indian Tomb

Police File 909

A Man's Head

The Legend of Frenchie King

Rail Pirates

The Blonde from Peking

The Biggest Bundle of Them All

Maya

Amok

Frisians in Peril

Mistress of the World - Part II

Matchless

The Battle

Buryat in European Cinema

Il faut que je tue monsieur Rumann

Typhoon

The Yellow Captain