Page 174 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

A FICKLE MAN, OR PORTRAIT OF BORIS BARNET AS A SOVIET DIRECTOR 155
Erdman’s father as an actor (in Outskirts) and his brother as a set decorator. 10
This fidelity seems to have been typical, whether he was using an actor like Koval-
Samborsky again after an interval of thirty years (during which period, according
to Leyda’s euphemism, he had ‘disappeared for some time’); or helping a dying
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Protazanov when he himself was in difficulties. We know that Protazanov had
encouraged Barnet’s first efforts at Mezhrabpom and had even convinced the
great Serafima Birman (the future Yevfrosinia in Ivan the Terrible) to appear in
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this ‘urchin’s’ film, The Girl with a Hatbox. Birman, in turn, would remain a
faithful friend of Barnet to the end.
The Old Jockey opens with a close-run trotting race, which the ageing Trofimov
loses. Then we move to a restaurant near the race-course, in the company of two
punters. Trofimov’s rival, Pavel, is trying to have him excluded from the club. From
this scene with its unpleasant odour of denunciation, we pass to something totally
different. In the country, peasants are making parachute jumps from a tower. News
comes of a packet just arrived from Moscow, which turns out to contain a sound