Page 180 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

A FICKLE MAN, OR PORTRAIT OF BORIS BARNET AS A SOVIET DIRECTOR 161
the calm rhythm of a village, with its fisherman and single shop, its drinkers and
courting couples, the academician who came here on his doctor’s advice finds little
rest.
What plot there is is atomised, conveyed by single gestures and images. A girl in
an office shouts into the telephone that the chairman is in the vicinity. Pan to a
young girl who comes into the office with him. The chairman picks up the
telephone and starts to shout. The youngster is being scolded. The chairman
objects: ‘I am trying to telephone.’ The child denounces the boy who is courting the
girl: ‘He is going to see the milkmaids!’ She is furious and, after everyone leaves,
she kicks the door shut several times. On the third occasion, it hits the
academician-Sunday painter, who enters clad in a paint-splashed shirt. Pan: he sits
down facing her. The child timidly comes back in. The girl furiously wields a
rubber stamp and makes to kick the door shut again, close to tears, while snapping,
‘Don’t smoke.’ The academician leaves and the child brings back the telephone,
whispering confidentially to her father, and obviously telling him the story of the
kicked door. The kid and her father leave, while the girl stays behind, her hand
resting on the papers which the wind is rustling.
Despite the number of doors opened and closed, Barnet remains far
from Lubitsch: his ‘touch’ consists precisely in defusing the gag before it becomes
openly comic. The film’s closing is an appropriately modest testament.
The academician receives a telephone call from the city. ‘They have found me,’
he says resignedly. Even as he prepares to leave, he goes on mending things that
the villagers bring him, repeating, ‘It’s not my speciality.’ He leaves his canvas and
palette, and a message on the stove for the child who built it without knowing how
to. First he writes an invitation, which he rubs out, then a farewell message: ‘You
will do more and better than me. We have given you all that we have been able to
achieve. Don’t let us down.’ A long shot of the house ends the film.
This character is tired and still suffers from war wounds, but he cannot help
tinkering with a sewing machine or a telephone receiver whenever he is asked to
repair it. His tiredness is probably akin to that of Barnet himself, who must have
known these emotions so well (cf. The Poet). There is hardly any bitterness in the
portraits drawn by those who knew him late in life, especially fellow film-makers,
all of whom would concur with Sadoul’s tribute: ‘overflowing with life and
generosity’. Otar Ioseliani (not an arbitrary choice on my behalf to end this essay)
recalled their meeting:

I knew him through his editor, who was also his girlfriend and in her
twenties. She was a very lively girl, and I remember her saying: ‘Watch what
I’m going to do when Barnet comes.’ She went up to him and ordered:
‘About turn!’ This immense figure turned round smartly and she jumped on
to his back, calling ‘Gee up!’ That’s how I met him.
He asked me: ‘Who are you?’ I said: ‘A director’ (this was when I was
making April [Aprel’, 1962]). ‘Soviet,’ he corrected, ‘you must always say
“Soviet director”. It is a very special profession.’ ‘In what way?’ I asked.