Boris Barnet

Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote:
The first sound film by Boris Barnet, one of the least seen and appreciated masters of the Russian cinema, this 1933 feature follows the impact of World War I on a village. Barnet takes nothing for granted, using sound as no one else had before or since and in the process reinventing the way we experience silence as well as sound. His view of war is expressed in uncanny emotional registers: scenes that begin tragically end comically and vice versa, and one of the more touching story lines involves a woman who falls in love with a German prisoner. Adapted by Barnet and Konstantin Finn from Finn’s novel, this is strong and indelible.Read More »

Quote:
Mr. West was the first feature film that Kuleshov made with a team of actors who had attended his Experimental Cine-Laboratory. For four years, this group had been doing preparatory work as they planned to reform the art of cinema with an eye on montage. Yet, for a long time, their ideas remained dry theory, because the workshop lacked resources to make films. The focus of the Cine-Lab’s practice was on acting études. Details of scenes were story-boarded, photographed, or “framed” by special viewfinders in order to visualize how they might look in an edited film sequence. Thanks to these exercises, the notion of montage that Kuleshov developed was inextricably linked to his ideas on acting and shot composition. Read More »

Quote:
Can you find happiness in the big city? The young hat maker Natascha, who lives with her grandfather in a suburb covered in winter snow, has to commute by train from the village to Moscow to deliver her creations to the extravagant Irene’s hat shop. For the administration, Irene claims Natascha to be her subtenant in order to be able to have more living space. The clumsy railway official woos the lovely country girl with his ravishing smile. But she enters into a fictitious marriage with the provincial Ilya in order to get him a room in Moscow. With an apparently worthless lottery ticket, which Irene’s husband gives to Natascha, the entanglements become turbulent. Boris Barnet describes the contrasts between city and country and the new living conditions in Moscow in a stylish and socially critical way. Three great acting talents, Anna Stén, Iwan Kowal-Samborski and Vladimir Fogel, form the triangle of relationships. Originally ordered as a vehicle to advertise the State Lottery, the film made the studio rich and the natural talent director Boris Barnet famous as the founder of lyrical comedy.Read More »

Quote:

Three reporters and an office girl are trying to stop a bacteriological strike by some powerful western business leaders against the USSR.Read More »

Quote:
Kazakhstan, the 50s. The main heroine of the film is a nine-year-old girl Alyonka, who is sent to town by her parents to study. The girl meets various companions on her long way. Some of them are telling about the story of their settlement or their attempt to settle in this Far East.Read More »

Quote:
The son of a kulak has an affair with a poor girl and an eye within the village council so that his father’s interest could be preserved. But a man reveals how the kulak intend to impoverish more the peasants and workers and get freed from taxes.Read More »

Quote:
Soviet agent Fedotov is air-dropped into Nazi occupied land. He changes over into Mr. Eckert, a German entrepreneur wishing to take advantage of eastern worker slave labor in occupied Ukraine. Eckert (Fedotov) enters into a partnership with a German entrepreneur whose son, Willy, is a high ranking Nazi. Together they go to Vinnitsa, Ukraine and start a factory. Fedotov begins seeking contacts with headquarters, but faces problems when a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator manages to infiltrate the Soviet partisans.Read More »

Quote:
Oksana Podpruzhenko, a beautiful brigadeer, a “heroin of the kolkhoz fields”, returns from Moscow where she has been awarded a medal for her work achievements. At the station she is met by a cheering mob of fellow townspeople, headed by Nazar, her boyfriend and director of the kolkhoz. Her idyll, however, is ruined with the arrival of Petro, who has returned from war to his native country…Read More »

Quote:
A well-known rider, Trofimov, goes on taking part in races in spite of the advanced age. After an humiliating race, he realizes his time has gone, decides to marry and to invite his niece from the kolkhoze and village where he once lived.Read More »