Page 168 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

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A fickle man, or portrait of Boris Barnet
as a Soviet director
Bernard Eisenschitz

Henri Langlois used to show By the Bluest of Seas [U samogo sinego morya,
1936] and The Wrestler and the Clown [Borets i kloun, 1957] so regularly at the
Cinémathèque Française that intrigued audiences ended up actually going to see
1
them. We used to wonder at a plot that had to be followed without any
translation, but even more about such an ‘American’ director amid the
acknowledged Soviet classics. Despite this misunderstanding (as it turned out),
there could be no mistaking Barnet’s immense adaptability in the face of any kind
of material, his narrative skill, his freedom and his lack of interest in any kind of
‘message’.
It is always irritating not to know more about a film-maker, even though the
films themselves should suffice. A short interview by Georges Sadoul seemed to
substantiate the discovery–together with Godard’s oft-quoted remark about the
‘famous Triangle style’ of which Barnet was the heir–but only after the director’s
death.
Sadoul spent the evening of 12 September 1959 with Boris Barnet. Six years
later he wrote:

I should perhaps have asked Barnet more about his work and creative
concerns at the end of the 50s. But as a historian preparing a study of Soviet
silent cinema I concentrated instead, rather too much perhaps, on the
beginning of his career. 2

Barnet himself, however, ranged a little more widely:

In thirty-seven years I’ve managed to direct about twenty films, most of
which have not satisfied me at all. My favourite ones are The Girl with a
Hatbox [Devushka s korobkoi, 1927], Outskirts [Okraina, 1933] and
Annuskha [1959], which I’ve just finished. I also quite like The Wrestler and
the Clown, which I completed after the death of Yudin, who had only directed
one reel. But I don’t care at all for Bounteous Summer [Shchedroe leto,
1951], which seems to be admired in France. That’s a film which suffered too
much from the constraints of a difficult period.