Page 261 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

242 INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY
film. Mikhail D.Volpin (b. 1902) was a poet who worked with Mayakovsky during the
Civil War on the ROSTA posters– Volga-Volga was his first screenplay.
10 Leyda, p. 271.
11 ibid., p. 388.
12 ‘Dramaturgiya i masterstvo aktera’, Iskusstvo kino, no. 6 (June 1952), p. 101.
13 The term often used in Russian for a film director is ‘rezhisser-postanovshchik’. The
term coined by Barnet, ‘rezhisser-polkovnik’, is thus a play on words, referring partly
to his films having been shelved (‘polka’ means ‘shelf’) and partly to his autocratic
style of direction (‘polkovnik’ means ‘colonel’).
14 An indication of the scale of this opportunity is provided by Eisenstein’s diary for
1945, quoted in: J.Leyda and Z.Voynow, Eisenstein at Work (New York: 1982), p.
148. Here Eisenstein records having seen in the space of two and a half months
more than thirty films, including The Human Comedy, Bathing Beauty, Laura, Stormy
Weather, Gaslight, Phantom of the Opera, Five Graves to Cairo, Shadow of a Doubt,
Star-Spangled Rhythm, My Friend Flicka, various war documentaries and Henry V
(‘three black marks’).
15 John Gillett recounts the first five minutes of Lyana [1955], which ‘shows a village
band gathering from various scattered parts of the village’. But it was Bounteous
Summer which prompted Jacques Rivette to write: ‘Eisenstein apart, Boris Barnet
must be considered the best Soviet film-maker’ (Cahiers du Cinema, no. 30 (February
1953)). Even if this was a provocation launched on the spur of the moment, time has
confirmed its prescience, especially in linking these two names. Reading Tarkovsky’s
The Mirror as situated in the tension between Eisenstein and Barnet certainly is not
overly interpretative. As to Rivette’s remarks on the film itself, however inaccurate
these may sound, they are none the less to the point (for Barnet’s talent lay in
reanimating the most petrified forms):

Barnet’s outlook on the world and on the Soviet universe is one of
innocence, but not that of an innocent. He knows that most demanding purity
and guards it jealously as his most precious yardstick, the surest protection
against a cruel universe which he instinctively mistrusts.
From one film to the next, Barnet’s universe is peopled by the same shy and
modest characters, who prove unexpectedly impulsive, and whom their
humour or heroism does little to protect, although here they have invented a
new form of modesty, ‘Stakhanovism’.

16 See, for example: J.-L.Godard, ‘Boris Barnet’, Cahiers du Cinéma, no. 94 (April
1959) (trans. T.Milne) in: J.Narboni (ed.), Godard on Godard (London: 1972), pp. 139—
40. It is in the course of this admiring notice that Godard invokes ‘the famous
Triangle style’ apropos Barnet.
17 Vasili M.Shukshin (1929—74) was a major writer of fiction and scenarios, a leading
director from 1964 until his early death, and a popular actor in the films of other
directors.
18 On Shukshin’s career, see: I.Christie, ‘Shukshin: Holidays for the Soul’, Sight and
Sound, vol. 55, no. 4 (Autumn 1986), pp. 261—2.