The article deals with the challenges of film adaptation of literary classics in the history of Russian artistic culture. It focuses on the representation of the imagery of Maxim Gorky (1868-1936) in cinema and on TV. He was one of the most often filmed writers in the XX century, but in the post-Soviet period his works ceased to be required by screen culture, despite their relevance and suitability for the screen. Analyzing the metamorphoses that Gorky's works have experienced, the author examines films of different artistic quality and reveals the ideological and creative standpoints of their directors. The representation of Gorky's images was most interesting and profound in the film adaptations by V. Pudovkin (“The Mother”, 1926), M. Donskoy (“Gorky's Childhood”, “In the World”, “My Universities”, “The Mother”, 1955, “Foma Gordeyev”, etc.), G. Roshal (“The Artamonov Business”), S. Solovyov ("Egor Bulychev and Others"), R. Nakhapetov ("Enemies"), G. Panfilov (“Vassa”, “The Mother”, 1990), V. Titov (“The Life of Klim Samgin”), etc. The peculiarity of these films is not only that they faithfully convey the key ideas and spirit of the writer's works, but also that each of them turned out to be innovative and relevant at the time of its creation. This is proof that the works of screen culture, based on Gorky's realistic plots built in turn on deep knowledge of social problems and character studies, can still be in demand today.