He has often been cited as one of the great early Soviet filmmakers, alongside Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin and Aleksandr Dovzhenko.
In 1934, he directed one of the first Soviet musical comedies, Accordion (poem by Alexander Zharov), about the life of Komsomol village, where he played the role of a kulak's son.
The theme of the Civil War in Ukraine, the heroic past of Ukrainian and Russian peoples formed the basis of the film "The Ballad of Cossack Golota" (from a story by Arkady Gaidar "R.V.S.
His premature death interrupted the film "Taras Shevchenko" (1951, finished Alexander Alov, Vladimir Naumov, Latif Faiziev).
Among his students: Alov, Naumov, Genrikh Gabai, Latif Faiziev, Felix Mironer, Yuri Ozerov, Sergei Parajanov, Marlen Khutsiev, Alexei Korenev, Yuri Zakrevsky, Lev Ivanov, Lev Danilov.