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Boris Barnet
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The boxer, actor and director Boris Barnet (1902-1965) was one of the greatest geniuses in Russian film. Even so, his name and his works are still considered something of an inside tip in the West. For the first time in Austria, the Film Museum is now presenting a representative selection of Barnet's unique oeuvre, which is both deeply lyrical and comedic.
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Boris Barnet’s life was one predicated on many unusual and unforeseen circumstances. Looking back, there is nothing conventional about this shadowed figure of Soviet cinema, starting with his name. Of English ancestry, Barnet was born in Moscow in 1902 to a father who owned a typographical store. The family’s position within the prosperous middle-class was a source of stress for Barnet, who was concerned that his social standing might pose a threat to his acceptance as a credible artist.
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Out of the dozen or so first-rate film artists who broke into production during the Soviet silent era, Boris Barnet (1902-65) has the most elusive personality. A pugilist turned actor (he made a splash as the American bodyguard Cowboy Jeddy in Lev Kuleshov's satire The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks) turned director, Barnet shows a taste for lyrical, proto-nouvelle-vague hijinks that can suggest a Russian equivalent of Jean Vigo.
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This engaging comedy of manners from celebrated Soviet director Boris Barnet finds a young peasant woman (Vera Maretskaya) traveling to Moscow to start a new life. She takes a job as a servant for a oily barber and his wife who live in a crowded tenement. Satirical jabs are taken at bourgeois society and urban problems like labor-union parades, housing shortages, and the crowded conditions of the city. The House On Trubnaya Square was one of the most important Soviet films of the 1920s but was not viewed by western audiences until 60 years after it was released. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
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Long hailed by critics to be the father of Soviet comedy and an inspiration to greats such as Tarkovsky and Bertolucci, Boris Barnet has remained unknown to Western audiences. That is, until now! This first-ever retrospective of Barnet’s work in North America introduces many exciting archival and newly subtitled prints. Characterized by their charm, stylistic freedom, ‘American’ plot constructions, and sometimes neutral politics, Barnet’s films represented what was a daring approach within Russian cinema, one which controversially set him apart from Eisenstein, Vertov and other contemporaries.
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A refreshing alternative to the giddy experimentalism of the 1920s can be found in the hilarious comedies of Boris Barnet. Two of them are available on DVD, Girl with the Hatbox (Devushka s korobkoi, 1927) and his first sound film, Outskirts (Okraina, 1933). Although light-hearted, these are ... works of considerable perception and artistry. Outskirts is also the title of one of the most original Russian films of the 1990s, Petr Lutsik's satiric homage to 1920s and 30s Soviet cinema that quotes dozens of the classics, including its nod to Barnet's film.
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Boris Barnet