Boris Barnet
1902 - 1965Boris Vasilyevich Barnet was a Soviet film director, actor and screenwriter of British origin. He directed 27 films between 1927 and 1963.
Boris Barnet was born in Moscow. His grandfather Thomas Barnet was a printer who moved to the Russian Empire from Great Britain back in the 19th century. A student of the Moscow Art School, he joined the Red Army at age 16 and was then professionally involved in boxing. In 1927 he shot his first feature, a comedy film, The Girl with a Hatbox, starring Anna Sten. His 1928 melodramatic film The House on Trubnaya, starring Vera Maretskaya, was rediscovered in the mid-1990s and now ranks as one of the classic Russian silent films.
Encouraged in his early efforts by Yakov Protazanov, Barnet emerged in the 1930s as one of the country's leading film-makers. Amongst Barnet's masterpieces, we find Outskirts (1933), a pacifist story acclaimed at the first Venice Film Festival.
Barnet's postwar work is exemplified by Secret Agent, the first Soviet spy film. The Stalin Prize-winning film was also years ahead of its time in exhibiting Hitchcockian influence and tricks and helped cement Barnet's reputation abroad.
It was Barnet's gift of artistic invention that made him stand out from the crowd of Soviet colleagues. In a Barnet film, a photograph in the newspaper would unexpectedly come alive, and scenes would often end with a detail introducing the next scene. He would begin a scene with a close up, "so that the space is progressively discovered by changing the axis or by camera movement". Among Russian filmmakers professing their admiration for Barnet was Andrei Tarkovsky.
After some years of artistic silence Boris Barnet committed suicide in Riga, Latvian SSR. His body was found hanging from a fishing line. He was survived by wife Alla Kazanskaya and daughter Olga Barnet.
Alyonka
Boris Barnet
Natalya Ovodova, Irina Zarubina
Set in 1955 when many migrated from Russia to the Steppes of Kazakhstan, this is the trip back to the Canal from the frontier and farms by a number of people who tell their settler stories. Alenka Muratova (Ovodova) is a winsome 13 year old who talks Dmitry Prokovich, the chief mechanic for the Soviet, into giving up his seat in the truck to a young mother with her infant daughter. Then Alenka and Dmitry share the back of the open truck with a young woman, newly graduated dentist who has not been able to find a position, Stefan, a hitchhiker with a dog who hopes his upper-class wife will return to him and the countryside, and Vasselina Petrovolka, a woman who lost one of her twin daughters in a riding accident by the river shortly after they arrived, and now is returning to tell the other twin of her sister's fate. A warm hearted look at common folks traveling in the frontier.
Alyonka
Дом на Трубной
Boris Barnet
Vera Maretskaya, Anel Sudakevich
Life is short and full of oppression, but that doesn't mean Parasha can't find love and laughter when she leaves her country home to take a job as a maid in the overcrowded, overworked, and underpaid world in the big city.
The House on Trubnaya
Шахматная горячка
Nikolai Shpikovsky, Vsevolod Pudovkin
José Raúl Capablanca, Vladimir Fogel
With an international chess tournament in progress, a young man becomes completely obsessed with the game. His fiancée has no interest in it, and becomes frustrated and depressed by his neglect of her, but wherever she goes she finds that she cannot escape chess. On the brink of giving up, she meets the world champion, Capablanca himself, with interesting results.
Chess Fever
Девушка с коробкой
Boris Barnet
Anna Sten, Vladimir Fogel
Young and beautiful girl, lives near Moscow, earning a making hats for the fashion store in Moscow. Due to the requirements of the Soviet government on standards of living space, the store owner has to prescribe it fictitiously in his apartment. But on the train she meets a young boy, and the housing problem changes their lives.
The Girl with the Hat Box
The Whistle Stop
Boris Barnet
Vasili Merkuryev, Yekaterina Mazurova
Moscow academician Pavel Pavlovich comes to a picturesque village on the seashore to calmly spend his vacation here. Whiling away the time for sketches, he manages to get acquainted with the local guys, the restless Grishka and the daughter of the foreman Nyuska. Together they build a stove, repair a sewing machine, and reconstruct a telephone switchboard. When Pavel Pavlovich suddenly falls ill, all the villagers take care of him. When the time comes to leave, Pavel Pavlovich understands that in this village far from the capital, he leaves a piece of his heart.
The Whistle Stop
Окраина
Boris Barnet
Aleksandr Chistyakov, Yelena Kuzmina
Outskirts is an internationally renowned masterpiece of early sound cinema. In a remote Russian village during World War I, colorful and nuanced characters experience divided loyalties: family loyalty vs. personal desire, nationalism vs. transcendent humanism.
Outskirts
Потомок Чингисхана
Vsevolod Pudovkin
Valéry Inkijinoff, I. Dedintsev
In 1918 a young and simple Mongol herdsman and trapper is cheated out of a valuable fox fur by a European capitalist fur trader. Ostracized from the trading post, he escapes to the hills after brawling with the trader who cheated him. In 1920 he becomes a Soviet partisan, and helps the partisans fight for the Soviets against the occupying British army. However he is captured by the British when they try to requisition cattle from the herdsmen at the same time as the commandant meets with a reincarnated Grand Lama. After the trapper is shot, the army discovers an amulet that suggests he is a direct descendant of Genghis Khan. They find him still alive, so the army restores his health and plans to use him as the head of a puppet regime. The trapper is thus thrust into prominence as he is placed in charge of the puppet government. By the end, however, the "puppet" turns against his masters in an outburst of fury.
Storm Over Asia
У самого синего моря
Boris Barnet
Yelena Kuzmina, Lev Sverdlin
Yussuf and Aliosha are two shipwrecked sailors on an island in the Caspian Sea. They start working as sailor and mechanic for the fishing boats of the "Lights of the Communism" kolkhoz. Here the two friends will fall in love with the beautiful Masha.
By the Bluest of Seas
Подвиг разведчика
Boris Barnet
Pavel Kadochnikov, Amvrosi Buchma
Soviet agent Fedotov is air-dropped into Nazi occupied land. He changes over into Mr. Ekhert, a German entrepreneur wishing to take advantage of eastern worker slave labor in occupied Ukraine. Ekhert (Fedotov) enters into a partnership with a German entrepreneur who's son, Willie, 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.
Secret Agent
Необычайные приключения мистера Веста в стране большевиков
Lev Kuleshov
Porfiri Podobed, Boris Barnet
Mr. West and his faithful bodyguard Jeddie visit the land of the 'evil' Bolsheviks. Through various mishaps, Mr. West discovers that the Soviets are actually quite remarkable people.
The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks
