
Dimitri Kirsanoff’s masterpiece “Ménilmontant” opens with a furiously fast edited axe murder that somehow foreshadows “Battleship Potemkin”. It then resolves to be a moving drama about two sisters, one of them played by Nadia Sibirskaia who is probably the most talented silent film actress next to Lillian Gish. Kirsanoff tells his poetic story without intertitles and knows exactly that the facial expressions of his actors reveal everything we have to know about the emotional states of the characters.Read More »