Rouben Mamoulian – his name cannot be but mentioned in the history of Cinematography. A tireless experimenter whose innate taste and intelligence enabled him to succeed where less talented directors had failed; Mamoulian directed only 16 movies but left an indelible mark on film history. Rouben Mamoulian was born in 1898, Tiflis, Georgia and attended Nersesian School in there. Since early childhood he had an eager for the arts and music, as his mother, Vergine Kalantarian, who was an Armenian theater actress in Tiflis. His father was a banker and wanted Rouben to become either an engineer or a lawyer. So Rouben Mamoulian went to Russia and studied law at the University of Moscow within 1915-1917, but indulged his passion for the theater by taking acting classes trained under Yevgeny Vakhtangov at night.
The October Revolution made Rouben Mamoulian leave the country and soon be settled in England. Mamoulian became a director and staged well-received productions in London and New York, culminating in his hugely successful 1927 Broadway play Porgy, which featured an all black cast. On the strength of that success, he was signed by Paramount to direct its backstage drama “Applause” (1929). His subsequent films “City Streets” (1931), saw Mamoulian refining his cinematic technique while continuing to experiment
with subjective camera work and the melding of picture and sound. Producers were so terrified that the opening sequence to “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (1931) would turn out badly – Mamoulian shot it all from the perspective of the protagonist – the released of the film omitted the first few minutes of the film. It wasn’t until the 1970s that this was added on again and Mamoulian’s brilliance  returned to one of his greatest films.
Mamoulian was called “Napoleon of the Cinema”. His “Love Me Tonight” (1932) is a considerably different proposition, and is the film most often cited as evidence of either Mamoulian’s cinematic genius or the inflated, superficial qualities of his work. His most famous films include “Song of the Songs” and “Queen Christina” (1933), starring Greta Garbo and John Gilbert.
If Hovhannes Adamian was the creator of the colored Television, Rouben Mamoulian was the creator of the colored cinema. “It is logical to believe that Rouben Mamoulian was among the leaders when Hollywood experienced a fictional reformation”, “New York Herald Tribune” wrote. His Becky Sharp (1935), the first feature film made with the newly perfected three-strip Technicolor process, utilized its bright hues for dramatic rather than merely pictorial effect.
Among the most successful films was “The Mark of Zorro”, “Blood and Sand”, “Golden Boy”. At the end of the career his poetic visions received little understanding, though he experienced an innovation ‘the method of dancing’ in his last film “Silk Stockings”. Though Rouben Mamoulian’s film never contained Armenian motives, he had always been propaganding his homeland and the noble Armenian nation, thanks to whom he had been established as a true artist: “….
I am happy as I feel strongly that I’m an artist and have the dignity of an artist thanks to my parents and my noble nation, from whom we all have inherited the rich spiritual merits of the art as the arts are the only truly universal medium”. Rouben Mamoulian died on the 4th of December in 1987, in Los Angeles, USA.

“…. I am happy as I feel strongly that I’m an artist and have the dignity of an artist thanks to my parents and my noble nation, from whom we all have inherited the rich spiritual merits of the art as the arts are the only truly universal medium”.
Rouben Mamoulian