Boris Barnet

Boris Vasilyevich Barnet (Russian: Бори́с Васи́льевич Ба́рнет; 18 June 1902 – 8 January 1965) was a Soviet film director, actor and screenwriter of British heritage. He directed 27 films between 1927 and 1963. Barnet was awarded the title Merited Artist of the Russian Federation in 1935, and Merited Artist of the Ukrainian SSR in 1951.^[1]

Early years

Boris Barnet was born in

In 1923, Barnet graduated from the Central Military School for Physical Education and worked as a sports teacher. At the same time he studied in Lev Kuleshov's film workshop. Barnet was cast as Cowboy Jeddy in the slapstick The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924) by Kuleshov. Its popularity encouraged him to begin a professional film career; Barnet learned filmmaking technique from scratch, with colleagues and friends such as Vsevolod Pudovkin, Sergei Komarov, Porfirii Podobed, Aleksandra Khokhlova, Sergei Galadzhev, and Leonid Obolenskii. His directorial debut, the comedic thriller Miss Mend (1926, based on a 1923 novel by Marietta Shaginian, codirected with Fedor Otsep), featured car chases and complicated stuntwork, all of which made the film a box-office hit for its production company, Mezhrabpomfilm Studio.

In 1927 he shot his first solo 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

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.^[3]

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".^[3] Among Russian filmmakers professing their admiration for Barnet was Andrei Tarkovsky. French film historian Georges Sadoul once called him "the best Soviet comedy director."^[1]

In 1965, after some years of artistic silence, Barnet committed suicide in

As actor

• The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924)
• Miss Mend (1926)
• Storm Over Asia
  (1928)
• The Living Corpse (1929)
• Secret Agent (Подвиг разведчика) (1947)

References