Page 260 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

NOTES 241
54 As in Nathan Becker agitprop was leavened with entertainment value. The film was
revived in Moscow in the 1960s because of its appeal as ethnic comedy.
55 Moscow Daily News, 11 October 1935, n.p.
56 The lone exception is, of course, Alexander Askoldov’s The Commissar [Komissar,
1967/87], which was completed in 1967 and shelved for twenty years thereafter. The
Commissar not only includes a sympathetic, indeed positive, image of a ‘little’ Jew
but also several lines of spoken Yiddish–the first heard in any Soviet film since the
Second World War.

8
A FICKLE MAN, OR PORTRAIT OF BORIS BARNET AS A
SOVIET DIRECTORBernard Eisenschitz

1 Henri Langlois (1914—77), co-founder and first director of the Cinémathèque
Française from 1936, was well known for his eccentric working methods and his
imaginative programming.
2 G.Sadoul, ‘Rencontre avec Boris Barnett’ [sic], Cahiers du Cinema, no. 169 (August
1965).
3 For extracts from this critique of The House on Trubnaya and other valuable
contextual material, see: F.Albera and R.Cosandey (eds), Boris Barnet: Ecrits.
Documents. Etudes. Filmographie (Locarno: 1985), where this essay first appeared.
4 Valentin P.Katayev (b. 1897) published important works in every decade from the
1920s to the 1970s, beginning with a satirical novel of the NEP, The Embezzlers in
1927. His ‘industrial’ novel, Time, Forward! (1932), applied cinematic techniques to
the description of a vast building project; and later works experimented further with
literary ‘montage’. Yevgeni P. Katayev (1903—42) was the brother of Valentin and
half of the ‘Ilf and Petrov’ partnership, with Ilya A. Ilf (1897—1937). These popular
satirists are best remembered for The Twelve Chairs and The Golden Calf, both
about NEP themes, including the stereotypical rich ‘Nepmen’, although they also
wrote film scripts and travel books. When Vladimir Mayakovsky committed suicide
in 1930, he left behind him two devastating comedies satirising the betrayal of
communist ideals under NEP: one was The Bed Bug, the other The Bathhouse.
5 J.L.Borges and A.Bioy Casares, Six Problems for Don Isidro (trans. N.Thomas di
Giovanni) (London: 1980), p. 83. Carlos Anglada is a fictitious author of vast erudition
encountered by the incarcerated detective-hero of this book.
6 M.Kushnirov, Zhizn’ i fil’my Borisa Barneta [The Life and Films of Boris Barnet]
(Moscow: 1977), p. 153.
7 Télérama, 8 February 1984.
8 The film officially purports to be a thinly fictionalised account of the origins of the
Stakhanovite movement, set in the Donbass in 1935, but there is little in the story-line
to substantiate this claim. However, several film historians claim to have found anti-
Semitic touches in the depiction of the criminal doctors.
9 Kushnirov, pp. 157—61. Nikolai R. Erdman (1902—70) was a playwright and author of
numerous screenplays from 1927 until his death; see Comédie-Française, no. 129—30
(May—June 1984), with texts on Erdman by Jean-Pierre Vincent, Beatrice Picon-
Vallin, Jean Ellenstein, Michel Vinaver and Bernard Eisenschitz on Erdman and