Page 172 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

A FICKLE MAN, OR PORTRAIT OF BORIS BARNET AS A SOVIET DIRECTOR 153

Figure 18 Anna Sten in The Girl with a Hatbox, directed by Barnet for Mezhrabpom in
1927.

cinematography and preferred to rely for evidence on his infallible artist’s memory,
avoiding the contamination of any actual viewing which would always be imperfect
and misleading’. 5
After the release of By the Bluest of Seas in April 1936, Barnet did not make a
film for three years. We know from his biographer, the cautious Kushnirov, that
Eisenstein recommended him for a job in a studio linked with the Moscow Art
6
Theatre. The project did not materialise, but the anecdote suggests the esteem in
which Eisenstein held Barnet (otherwise expressed only in one of his famous
obscene puns referring to Barnet’s powers of seduction).
It would be reassuring to interpret Barnet’s silences as proof of his moral
probity, as a refusal of complicity. After the freedom of By the Bluest of Seas (a
freedom which in 1936 would have been unthinkable anywhere), one might have
expected silence, exile, or internal resistance. For a French writer in Télérama the
highest praise that can be accorded Barnet is the fact that ‘Eventually he