Antonina Khanzhonkova, the first wife of the legendary Russian film producer Aleksandr Khanzhonkov, is known as the true uncrowned “tsarina” of Russian imperial cinema. In his brilliant memoir, film director Viacheslav Viskovskii wrote that “Khanzhonkov’s studio set the tone of everything. Madame Khanzhonkova was in charge of the entire business (both production and distribution), and Khanzhonkov, without violating the truth, could identify himself as Menelaus did: ‘I am the Tsarina’s husband’” (Viskovskii 3). Viskovskii even clarified that “I will refer to Khanzhonkov, who was the official head of the studio. Still, I will mean the actual chief and dictator, Madame Khanzhonkova.” Indeed, according to various evidence, she acted as a producer, film director, casting director, and screenwriter while contributing to all stages of film production from set design to editing. The first attempt to give an overview of Antonina Khanzhonkova’s career was made by Michele Leigh in 2015. This profile builds off of that important article, which was based mostly on secondary sources, by revisiting Khanzhonkova’s legacy mainly through primary materials.

A photograph, preserved in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts, shows Antonina Khanzhonkova between the directors Evgeni Bauer and Piotr Chardynin at the A. Khanzhonkov and Co. celebration party in 1914. On the back of the photograph, Aleksandr Khanzhonkov’s second wife Vera Popova-Khanzhonkova, who was the company’s editor in the 1910s, identified the woman as Antonina. This photograph is not only a vivid illustration of the tsarina’s centrality in the cinema of the Russian Empire; it was also used by me to identify documentary footage from the same party that had been accessible online for approximately a decade. (The video is dated 1913, but archival sources indicate that the footage in question was shot in 1914 [“Opis’”].) While the two male masters of cinema were always known, it was unclear who the woman arm-in-arm with them was. Now that we know it is Antonina, we can see that, in this documentary, she appears several times as the company’s major representative and the connecting link between the company’s greatest masters, Chardynin and Bauer.

Antonina was born on July 27, 1879, in Moscow. Her father was the retired gubernial (provincial) secretary (a minor official) Nikolay Batorovskii (“Metricheskie knigi. Moskva” 801). According to Antonina’s granddaughter, Irina Orlova, he came from the old Polish nobility and even considered himself a descendant of Stefan Batory (Stephen Báthory), the king of Poland (Orlova 30). Little else is known of Antonina’s parents, but there is evidence that her mother, Kapitolina Ivanovna, ran a small business selling sewing machines (Moskva – Sibir’  234). Sergei Safronov, who worked at Khanzhonkov’s Yalta film studio and enthusiastically collected materials on the producer for decades, was able to interview many people who knew him and his family, and writes of Antonina’s background as follows: “She was very well brought up and got a good comprehensive education. She knew the arts, drama, and music. She was a great pianist and had a beautiful voice” (Safronov 5-6).

However, the Batorovskii family was probably not particularly wealthy, and Antonina’s brother Sergei had to marry a rich heiress named Sophia Obolenskaia; eventually, he divorced her and married the actress Aleksandra Goncharova who starred in several early Russian films (“Metricheskie knigi. Moskva” 487). Sergei Batorovskii made a distinguished career in the system of commercial schools, the new and promising institutions that gave education in trade and business in addition to general subjects. I mention this here to highlight that the professional connections between the brother and sister were strong. Sergei later became one of the first shareholders of “A. Khanzhonkov and Co.,” the cinema enterprise initiated by his sister and brother-in-law, and joined its board (“Khronika”). It is possible that Batorovskii was partially responsible for the company’s investments in many educational films. In return, Antonina was a member of the Moscow Society for Commercial Education Advancement and a member of the board of trustees of the Women’s Commercial School (Nezabytye mogily 30).

In 1900, Antonina married Aleksandr Khanzhonkov, then a military officer. According to Irina Orlova, “Once at a ball, Aleksandr met an elderly maid of honor who promised  to find him a good bride. And she kept her promise. Aleksandr’s intended was Tonechka [the nickname for Antonina]. A native Muscovite from a respectable noble family was the perfect bride that a young officer who wanted to make a good match could only dream of” (Orlova 16). (Orlova’s book is largely based on family stories and legends and therefore is not entirely accurate. However, as a unique source, it is of great value to film scholars.) At that time, Antonina’s husband was still in the military service, and the new couple settled in Rostov-on-Don where the Khanzhonkov family ran a photography business.

It is not surprising that the new couple decided to move from photography to cinema as many others did at that time. Moreover, according to Aleksandr Khanzhonkov, his mother (Antonina’s mother-in-law) also owned a movie theater (“Istoriia izdaniia odnoi knigi” 423). In his memoir, Khanzhonkov does not write much of Antonina’s contribution to the cinema business. However, according to both Safronov and Orlova, who were able to talk to Antonina and Aleksandr’s children, she had been making a most significant contribution to the cause from the very beginning. The famous Pegasus logo that became a hallmark of the studio probably also came from Antonina: “As a brave rider, she easily tamed outlaw horses. And it is no coincidence that the trademark of the trading house and subsequently the joint stock company was the mythical Pegasus, the handsome winged horse rearing over the letters A and Kh” (Safronov 6). This “A” was probably for “Aleksandr,” but it could well be for “Antonina,” too.

What exactly did Antonina do at the company? According to many memoirs, she did everything. To be more precise, I will list some of her tasks referring to relevant sources. I will then write in more detail about her work as a film director and screenwriter.

Antonina took an active part in all stages of pre-production, including casting. In her memoir, the actress Sof’ia Goslavskaia wrote that when she was looking for a job in cinema, she was interviewed by Antonina rather than her husband. “Antonina Nikolaevna took the measure of me,” she wrote, “smiled kindly and gave me her hand in a long white glove. […] Throughout this entire conversation, Khanzhonkov was silent, absentmindedly turning his gaze from me to the window. I was surprised then, but later I knew that his wife was the main assistant in his work, and he trusted her with the most serious matters” (Goslavskaia 126). Cameraman Grigori Giber similarly recalled that “It was Khanzhonkov’s wife who chose actors; she was in charge of the whole artistic department” (Giber 11).

Antonina was also sometimes involved in the production process, and not everyone in the crew found it helpful. As the set designer Boris Mikhin recalled: “She could come to the studio, where there was a film set designed by a production artist, and demand that some incredible paper flowers or things made by the blind be placed in the foreground. Sometimes, I was ready to cry because of her. Or I was just hiding after I had locked the prop room so that she wouldn’t take something from there and bring it to the set to ruin the production” (Mikhin 9). While Antonina’s energy and ability to delve into various film professions are truly impressive, it is important to keep in mind that her multitasking style of work probably had its negative side. Mikhin was not the only one who found it difficult to work with Antonina. As the actor and screenwriter Nikolai Branitskii recounted, the famous film director and animator Władysław Starewicz left the Khanzhonkov company because of his disagreements with Antonina (Branitskii 2).

There is not much evidence of how editing worked in pre-revolutionary Russia. However, it is possible to confirm that Antonina also took part in the editing and post-production processes. In his memoirs, Khanzhonkov recalled  that when Evgeni Bauer did not want to finish the film The Alarm (Nabat) in 1916, Antonia made sure the film was completed: “When Bauer finally renounced his unfortunate creation, the head of the artistic department of the affected factory A. N. Khanzhonkova, and V. A. Karalli, who starred in the film, decided to put the expensive material to use. They turned to V. D. Popova who was then the factory’s assistant director for editing. They started to look for new interpretations of the existing scenes” (Khanzhonkov 101-102). Vera Popova-Khanzhonkova (aka V. D. Popova) later wrote of a similar earlier experience in 1913 when she worked with Antonina on The Precipice (Obryv), an adaptation of the classic novel by Ivan Goncharov. According to Popova-Khanzhonkova, “Every effort was made to finish this film as quickly as possible and release it ahead of schedule. Director P. Chardynin worked in the studio; I did all the work on the preliminary and final editing while the screenwriter Maria Kallash and A.N. Khanzhonkova selected extracts from Goncharov’s novel for the intertitles” (Khanzhonkova 9).

Finally, Antonina had many administrative duties and would represent the studio in the press. In 1913, the leading cinema journal Sine-Fono published a letter signed by “the board member [of the] joint-stock company A. Khanzhonkov and K◦ Antonina Khanzhonkova” (“Okolo monopol’nykh kartin” 20). In this letter, Khanzhonkova defended the interests of the company, explaining its distribution politics. A few years later, a theatrical  periodical mentioned her holding an even higher position: “A. A. Khanzhonkov, the head of the joint-stock company, and A. I. Khanzhonkova, the head of the company board, have returned from the Black Sea coast where they supervised a big shoot of new films” (“Kino-khronika”).

In addition to the contributions that I have just sketched out, Antonia had a hand in film directing and screenwriting, arguably her most creative tasks at the film company. She was the first woman in Russia to direct a film independently, that is without a co-director. (Elizaveta Thiemann, the wife of another major producer, started directing earlier, but, as far as we know, only made one film, The Passing of a Great Old Man [Ukhod velikog startsa, 1912], with Yakov Protazanov.) Antonia ultimately directed three films. Her second film, The Fiery Devil (Ognennyi diavol, 1916), is probably the most famous one, unfortunately, due to its faults. The journal Ekran Rossii, for example, wrote about it negatively upon its release (“Na prem´erakh kinematografa”). According to the memoir of the actor and director Hamo Bek Nazaryan (Amo Bek-Nazarov) who starred in the film with Vera Kholodnaia, neither of them took this film seriously and they ridiculed “Antosha” (Khanzhonkova’s dismissive nickname) during the shooting (Bek-Nazarov 51). Prominent Russian film scholar Veniamin Vishnevskii calls The Fiery Devil “an extremely ill-directed ‘heartbreaking drama’ based on a clichéd plot” (Vishnevskii 107). Sadly, the film is considered lost, so we cannot confirm or challenge these assessments.

It seems strange that Khanzhonkova’s debut film, A Mistake of the Heart (Oshibka serdtsa, 1915) did not attract more attention from scholars. According to the reviews, in some ways, this film was brilliant. The Proektor review for A Mistake of the Heart starts with this intriguing remark: “At the beginning, the film seems to follow a usual pattern: the fiancé is called up to fight, and the fiancée becomes a medical nurse. But in the middle of the film, a bright artistic twist destroys the tediousness of the beginning, and up to the end the film is particularly thrilling” (“Kriticheskoe obozrenie”). Indeed, the plot about a woman who follows her beloved to the front becoming a medical nurse was prevalent when World War I started. Newspapers and magazines published hundreds of short stories of that kind. The husband is fighting, and the wife is going to the front hoping to nurse him among other warriors; she finds her husband wounded and brings him home to their son – that is an example from the most popular magazine Niva (Avilova). In cinema, this trivial plot was also very popular and can be spotted in a number of Russian films, such as With Fire and Blood (Ogniom i krov’iu, 1914), Happiness Came Back (Vernulos’ schast’ie, 1915), and The Jewish Volunteer Fighter (Ievrei-dobrovolets, 1915), to name just a few. But in Khanzhonkova’s film, the plot was turned upside-down. Vera goes to the front to nurse her wounded fiancé, who has a bad head injury, but when the doctors take off the bandages, she realizes that there has been a mistake, and all these weeks, she has been taking care of a stranger. However, the biggest mistake, “a mistake of the heart,” reveals itself later. When Vera returns to Moscow and meets her fiancé, who has come home due to his injury, she gets flowers from the man she actually nursed at the front. Her jealous fiancé insults her and Vera realizes that they do not belong to each other and breaks off the engagement. In other words, the feat of the female protagonist does not lead to the lovers’ reunion, nor does it result in her finding new love (the viewer might think that Vera would turn to the man she had saved). However, “the mistake” she had made becomes a new beginning: by rejecting her undeserving fiancé, Vera finds her new self. This was a very unusual way to construct a war drama; in A Mistake of the Heart, the most important battles are fought inside of a woman’s soul.

This clever modification of a well-known plot is the credit of a screenwriter rather than a director, but, in this case, these two roles were very close: the screenplay was written by “Antalek,” which is a corporate pseudonym of Antonina (“Ant”) and Aleksander (“alek”) Khanzhonkov. The press praised A Mistake of the Heart not only for the interesting plot; a prominent critic, Vitol’d Akhramovich, also noted that it contained, “Clever screenplay, good casting, most scrupulous directing – everything proves that the studio has decided to show its best” (“Moskovskaia khronika” [no. 49]). While sadly this film is also lost, it is fortunate that both the libretto (synopsis), of which there are two versions (“Novye lenty”; “Opisaniia kartin” [1915]), and the screenplay (Antalek, “Oshibka serdtsa”) have survived, allowing us to reconstruct the plot.

Given that she co-wrote the screenplay with her husband, one might doubt whether Antonina directed the film independently. According to Veniamin Vishnevskii, the film was written and directed by “Antalek [A. Khanzhonkova and N. Turkin]” (Vishnevskii 72). However, this information cannot be accurate since the pseudonym “Antalek” never included Nikandr Turkin. Besides, Turkin later published an article about A Mistake of the Heart in which he praised the author, and it is very unlikely that he would write this way of himself. According to Turkin, “The whole contents of this work of art are limited to one particular life event. This is brief and unexpected, just like an anecdote. But the talented author has managed to put it in such a simple and charming form, to enlighten the beauty of a woman’s heart so tenderly, that in this anecdote a tragic depth has been found, and it has gained the power of an epic poem” (qtd. in Granitov 68). Furthermore, in November 1915, Teatral’naia gazeta reported that A Mistake of the Heart was being directed by Antonina Khanzhonkova (“Moskovskaia khronika” [no. 47]). In my opinion, one can be more or less certain that A Mistake of the Heart was directed solely by Antonina.

A Mistake of the Heart is, in my view, the highlight of the whole Antalek collection of five screenplays, most of which also appeared in Pegas (The Pegasus), a periodical that was published by the Khanzhonkov company (A-k; Antalek, “Irina Kirsanova. Roman”; Antalek, “Iz mira tainstvennogo. Rozhdestvenskaia novella”; Antalek, “Oshibka serdtsa”). It is interesting that these screenplays are so varied in genre and style. Irina Kirsanova (1915) and The Brothers Boris and Gleb (Brat’ia Boris i Gleb, 1915) are crime films; From the Mysterious World (Iz mira tainstvennogo, 1917) is a Christmas melodrama; and Life Defeated by Death (Zhizn’, pobezhdennaia smert’iu, 1916) is a mystical thriller. The Slave of Her First Feeling (Pervogo chuvstva raba, 1917) may seem a traditional melodrama about a woman’s fall from grace, but it takes an unexpected direction toward social cinema. It appears as if the Khanzhonkovs were experimenting with different genres to reform conventional screenwriting.

It is worth noting that in Veniamin Vishnevskii’s guide to pre-revolutionary films, Antonina Khanzhonkova is also credited as a screenwriter for the film Princess Larisa (Kniazhna Larisa, 1917)—but with a question mark, meaning that Vishnevskii was not sure if she worked on the film. Since the script is lost and the film only partially survives, it is difficult to confirm or contradict this assumption. According to the libretto (“Opisaniie kartin” [1917]), this was a rather conventional sensational melodrama with references to the contemporary revolution events. The plot does not seem to be particularly innovative; anyone, including Khanzhonkova, could have written it.

Many authors of memoirs looking back on early Russian cinema mention Khanzhonkova, and, in most cases, she is described negatively and satirically. For instance, the aforementioned set designer Boris Mikhin wrote that, “She was registered as the chief director of the company and basically ran the entire production: she managed the directing, hired new employees, and even interfered in the set designer’s work. That caused constant misunderstandings between us… She had no taste; her recommendations were disruptive and they spoiled films” (Mikhin 2-3). However, famous Russian actress Vera Iureneva offers a contradictory description, underscoring the film historian’s challenge when faced with so many differing opinions: “Being well bred and well mannered, she rarely interfered in the artistic side of production but successfully ran the financial and administrative affairs in an organized manner” (Iureneva 270-1).

Unfortunately, we have very little evidence from the 1910s of how Khanzhonkova was perceived by her colleagues, but what we have is very eloquent. In her letters to Olga Knipper-Chekhova written in 1913, the screenwriter Maria Kallash-Garris describes Khanzhonkova as “a highly intelligent, gifted and artistic person” and points to her significant role in the studio: “Actually, the true manager of the artistic side of the whole enterprise is his [Aleksandr Khanzhonkov’s] wife. […] In terms of art, Khanzhonkov himself is in many ways in the dark…” (Kallash-Garris. Ed. khr. 2384, list 1-2; Kallash-Garris. Ed. khr. 2385, list 5). It is also important that Khanzhonkova was known as an active female film director outside the narrow world of Russian cinema production. In the magazine Zhurnal dlia zhenshchin, which was addressed to a broad spectrum of female readers, writer Vsevolod Chaikovskii noted that, “At this point, we have only two female film directors. Those are the actress Preobrazhenskaia (who played Mania in The Keys of Happiness [Kliuchi schast’ia, 1913]) and A. A. Khanzhonkova (who directed A Mistake of the Heart starring Polevitskaia)” (Chaikovskii). In addition to revealing that those outside of film production knew of Antonina, this is further evidence of Khanzhonkova being the sole director of A Mistake of the Heart.

From the spring of 1917 onward, Aleksandr Khanzhonkov lived in Yalta, an old and beautiful city in Crimea (Khanzhonkov 110). There were probably two reasons for this move. First, the company had built a new studio in Yalta, which made it possible to produce motion pictures in a remote and picturesque area with a good climate far from the noisy capital. Second, by that time, Khanzhonkov was seriously ill; he had been badly injured in the Russo-Japanese War, and that had affected his health, and, at some point, he found himself confined to a wheelchair. The Yalta climate was supposed to be better for him. Between 1917-1919, while Khanzhonkov was working at the new film studio, Antonina was in charge of all the company’s affairs in Moscow. This was a very challenging yet significant period of her career since she had to run the business without her partner.

In August 1919, all the cinema enterprises were confiscated by the Soviet government. Along with a small group of employees still dedicated to the Khanzhonkovs, Antonina left Moscow to join her husband in the south. Later, Vera Popova-Khanzhonkova described this journey to Elena Kasatkina: the group had to navigate between the troops of both the Red and the White armies; once “they were taken as spies and were about to be executed (as they thought), but someone from the White army recognized Antonina Nikolaevna, so that they were set free” (Kasatkina 69).

In the south, the Khanzhonkovs tried to continue making films for some time. Sergei Frenkel, a then-famous Russian cinematographer, later recalled: “Our encounters in Yalta in 1919 are especially memorable to me. Having lost everything that had been created with such love and hard labor over the years (the factory, the studio, and their movie theaters in Moscow), A.N. and A.A. Khanzhonkov moved to Crimea and here again they began to build a film studio and organize filming. They were doing this in nightmarishly difficult conditions, both of them overworked and sick” (Frenkel). Although these efforts kept the company afloat for a while, the business was not restored in the long term.

Soon it became clear that, for political reasons, it was impossible to continue these Yalta projects. In the fall of 1920, the couple left for Europe. According to Antonina’s granddaughter Irina Orlova, it was Antonina who insisted on emigration because she was then thinking about the well-being of her children, Nina and Nikolai. However, as Orlova later wrote, the move did not bring Antonina happiness or satisfaction:

Antonina Nikolaevna completely lost heart, almost nothing remained of her former enthusiasm, she was nearly broken. Perhaps she regretted that she had so persistently demanded from her husband that they all go abroad. But what was done was done, and it was almost impossible to change anything! Everything remained there [in Russia], far away, everything that was dear and sweet to her heart […] Antonina Nikolaevna endlessly asked herself the same question, not finding an answer: for what? Why is fate so cruel and merciless to her?! How could all this happen? After all, she faithfully had fulfilled her Christian duty to her family, husband, children, and to God! (Orlova 90)

The Khanzhonkovs’ marriage collapsed. In 1923, Aleksandr returned to the USSR, while Antonina, with their son and daughter, remained in Europe.

Film historian Rashit Yangirov, who worked extensively on Russian émigré periodicals, has been able to reconstruct Antonina’s career in Germany. According to him, with her former Russian colleagues Pavel Antik, Abram Gekhtman, and A. Springfeld, Antonina established Spektatorfilm, a distribution company that owned two movie theaters in Berlin (the Schiller-kino and the Kammerspiele). As Yangirov observes, “It looks as if the business did not go very well; it did not bring in much money, and everything she earned was spent on her medical treatment and the education of her children” (39). There are other sources that confirm that, in the mid-1920s, Antonina was in a very difficult financial situation. Elena Kasatkina has written that her mother and Alexandra Batorovskaia (the actress Aleksandra Goncharova, who was married to Sergei Batorovskii, Antonina’s brother) were hiding valuables in small pies that they baked to send to Antonina so that she could sell them and get money to buy essentials (Kasatkina 65). However, if her business was bringing in enough money to treat the cancer that she was then suffering from and to pay for her children’s studies (Nikolai was then a student at the Charles University in Prague), it could not have been entirely unsuccessful. At that time, many Russian émigrés could barely afford bread and butter.

Antonina Khanzhonkova died in Berlin on July 29, 1925. The Berlin émigré newspaper Rul’ wrote about her death several times. The formal obituary was published on August 2 (“A. N. Khanzhonkova”). A day earlier, however, her death had been reported in the news and, in addition, two framed announcements appeared on the back page of that issue of Rul’: “Russian cinematographers in Berlin, with heartfelt sorrow, inform friends and acquaintances of the untimely death of the deeply respected and dear Antonina Nikolaevna Khanzhonkova, which followed a long and severe illness…”; “Her son and daughter announce to family and friends with deep regret the untimely passing of their dear and beloved mother Antonina Nikolaevna Khanzhonkova…” (Rul’).

The sad news traveled way beyond Berlin. Yangirov mentions that the New York émigré newspaper Novoe russkoe slovo also published an obituary for Khanzhonkova (Yangirov 384). Unfortunately, I have not been able to find the copy he was referring to since most international collections do not have issues prior to September 1925. Kinotvorchestvo, the major émigré cinema journal in Paris, also published a long article by Sergei Frenkel to commemorate Antonina:

Antonina Nikolaevna Khanzhonkova has died. Russian cinematography has lost one of its outstanding pioneers […] She was a businesswoman of rare energy and intelligence, who happily combined clarity, logic, and the ability to quickly grasp the essence of a matter with purely feminine sensitivity and intuition. […] I will not list all the merits of A.N. Khanzhonkova; it is the task of a future historian of Russian cinema. I can only testify with confidence that these merits were very significant, especially if one takes into account how difficult the first steps were for those who, like A.N., bore on their shoulders all the work of building a cinema business. (Frenkel)

It might seem puzzling that the death of Antonina, who was no longer an influential person, made such a strong impact on the émigré community. But those who had once created the cinema in the pre-Revolutionary period alongside her were saying goodbye to their tsarina.

The author wishes to express heartfelt gratitude to her colleagues Antonina Men’shikova, Anastasia Plotnikova, Arina Ranneva, Ekaterina Tarasova, and Alexandra Ustyuzhanina for their invaluable help in this research as well as to Professor Julian Graffy for his kind help with editing this piece and all his comments and suggestions, which made the article much more readable and convincing.