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Boris Barnet
Boris Barnet
Boris Barnet
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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]

Key Information

Early years

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Boris Barnet was born in Moscow.[2] His grandfather Thomas Barnet was a printer who moved to the Russian Empire from the United Kingdom in the 19th century.[3] A student of the Moscow Art School, he volunteered to join the Red Army at age 18 and was then professionally involved in boxing.

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 Yakov Protazanov, Barnet emerged in the 1930s as one of the country's leading film-makers, working with the likes of Serafima Birman and Nikolai Erdman. Outskirts (1933), a pacifist story acclaimed at the first Venice Film Festival, is considered one of Barnet's masterpieces. Set in tsarist Russia during World War I, it portrays a group of provincial townsfolk: a shoemaker, his daughter who falls in love with a German POW, and two brothers volunteering for the front.

Later years and work

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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.[4]

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".[4] 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 Riga, Latvian SSR[5] by hanging himself in a hotel room.[6][7] He was survived by wife Alla Kazanskaya (1920–2008) and daughter Olga Barnet (1951–2021).

Filmography

[edit]
As director
  • Miss Mend (Мисс Менд) (1926)
  • The Girl with a Hatbox (Девушка с коробкой)(1927)
  • Moscow in October (Москва в Октябре) (1927)
  • The House on Trubnaya (Дом на Трубной) (1928)
  • Living Things (Живые дела) (1930)
  • The Ghost (Привидения) (1931)
  • The Thaw (Ледолом) (1931)
  • Outskirts (Окраина) (1933)
  • By the Bluest of Seas (У самого синего моря) (1936)
  • A Night in September (Ночь в сентябре) (1939)
  • The Old Horseman (Старый наездник) (1940) output to the screen in 1959
  • A Good Lad (Славный малый) (1942)
  • Dark Is the Night (Однажды ночью) (1945)
  • Secret Agent (Подвиг разведчика) (1947)
  • Pages of Life (Страницы жизни) (1948)
  • Bountiful Summer (Щедрое лето) (1950)
  • Lyana (Ляна) (1955)
  • The Poet (Поэт) (1956)
  • The Wrestler and the Clown (Борец и клоун) (1957)[8]
  • Annushka (Аннушка) (1959)
  • Alyonka (Алёнка) (1961)
  • Whistle Stop (Полустанок) (1963)
As actor

References

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Boris Barnet

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''Boris Barnet'' is a Soviet Russian film director known for his lyrical comedies and poetic depictions of everyday life in Soviet cinema during the silent and early sound eras. His films often blended humor, romance, and gentle social observation, distinguishing him as one of the most distinctive voices in early Soviet filmmaking. Born on June 18, 1902, in Moscow to a family of British descent, Barnet initially studied at the School of Art and Architecture before serving in the Red Army as a medic and transitioning to film. He trained at the State Film School under Lev Kuleshov and began his directing career in the mid-1920s, quickly gaining recognition for his instinctive approach and focus on human behavior. Barnet's most celebrated works from the late 1920s and 1930s include The Girl with the Hatbox, The House on Trubnaya Square, Outskirts, and By the Bluest of Seas, which showcase his talent for combining comedy with subtle commentary on Soviet society. His style emphasized warmth, lyricism, and perceptive portrayals of ordinary people, setting him apart from more propagandistic contemporaries. He continued directing through the war years and into the postwar period, completing over twenty films in a career spanning nearly four decades. Barnet also occasionally acted in his own projects and faced challenges under shifting Soviet cultural policies. He died by suicide on January 8, 1965, in Riga, leaving a legacy as a master of gentle, humanistic cinema.

Early Life

Birth and Heritage

Boris Barnet was born on June 18, 1902, in Moscow, Russian Empire (now Russia), into a family with partial British heritage. His paternal grandfather was an English printer who had settled on the outskirts of Moscow, establishing the family's roots in the printing trade during the pre-revolutionary period. This English ancestry through his father's side provided Barnet with a mixed cultural background in the bustling urban environment of turn-of-the-century Moscow. The family's involvement in printing reflected modest but established professional ties in the city before the upheavals of the Russian Revolution.

Education and Early Pursuits

Boris Barnet studied painting and architecture at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, developing his early artistic talents in drawing and design. He subsequently became involved with Konstantin Stanislavsky's First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre, where he worked as a set painter and engaged in acting training within the innovative environment of the studio. Amid the revolutionary period, Barnet volunteered for service in the Red Army around 1920, serving as a medic during the Russian Civil War. He also pursued physical activities, becoming professionally involved in boxing and later serving as a physical training instructor. These experiences in the visual arts, theatrical training, military service, and athletic pursuits shaped Barnet's transition from artistic studies to performance-oriented endeavors before his entry into cinema.

Entry into Cinema

Acting Beginnings

Boris Barnet began his career in cinema as an actor during the early 1920s, initially drawing on his physical background as a boxer to secure roles in the emerging Soviet film industry. His acting debut occurred in 1924 with a prominent role in Lev Kuleshov's satirical comedy The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks, where he played the character Cowboy Jeddy, an American visitor whose exaggerated mannerisms and athletic antics contributed to the film's physical comedy and critique of Western stereotypes of Soviet Russia. This role marked Barnet's entry into film acting and showcased his natural aptitude for physical performance, helping him gain recognition within the avant-garde circles of Soviet cinema. Barnet continued to appear in films during the mid-1920s, including a role in the 1926 serial Miss Mend, which he also co-directed with Fedor Otsep. This participation in Miss Mend represented one of his last acting appearances before he shifted primary focus to directing, though his early on-screen work remained limited to these key contributions in the experimental Soviet silent era. His early acting experience provided a foundation for his understanding of performance that later informed his approach as a director.

Collaboration with Lev Kuleshov

Barnet's collaboration with Lev Kuleshov began in 1924 when Kuleshov and his wife, actress Aleksandra Khokhlova, noticed his athletic footwork as a boxer serving in the Red Army and invited him to join their ensemble. Barnet participated as both an actor and assistant in Kuleshov's cinema workshop, a key training ground for early Soviet filmmakers that emphasized experimental techniques in acting and editing. He appeared in a prominent role as the cowboy Jeddy in Kuleshov's feature The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924), marking his first significant film work under Kuleshov's direction. The association exposed Barnet to Kuleshov's pioneering ideas on montage and actor training, which formed part of the foundation for Soviet cinema theory, though Barnet's own later style developed in a more lyrical direction. However, the collaboration proved short-lived and ended on poor terms following an accident during the production of Mr. West, in which Barnet was left hanging during a stunt while Kuleshov berated him instead of providing immediate assistance. Barnet ceased working with Kuleshov after the film. Despite the abrupt conclusion, Barnet's time in Kuleshov's workshop provided crucial early experience in film production and acting, serving as a stepping stone that facilitated his eventual transition from performer and assistant to independent director.

Directing Career

Silent Era (1927–1930)

Boris Barnet launched his directorial career in the late silent era with films that emphasized lyrical comedy, gentle social satire, and affectionate observations of everyday Soviet life, building on his earlier experience with physical comedy in Lev Kuleshov's collective and his initial directing work including co-directing Miss Mend (1926) and directing Moscow in October (1927). His first major solo feature, The Girl with the Hatbox (1927), is a romantic comedy that lightly critiques the housing crisis, bureaucratic mismanagement, and bourgeois attitudes under the New Economic Policy. The story follows Natasha, an independent young milliner from the countryside who shares her Moscow apartment with a penniless student by pretending they are married, resulting in comic misunderstandings and a resolution that playfully subverts traditional marriage norms. Barnet incorporated American-style influences, including Chaplin-inspired gags, visual humor, and pathos, to create a cheerful, optimistic portrayal of Soviet society where the heroine is self-sufficient and capable. Contemporary reception was mixed, with praise for its cinematography and light tone offset by criticism of its perceived commercialism and lack of ideological rigor. In 1928, Barnet directed The House on Trubnaya Square, a comedy-drama centered on Parasha, a naïve country girl who arrives in Moscow with her duck and encounters exploitation while working as a cleaner in a self-serving hairdresser's apartment. The film uses the setting of a five-story apartment building on Trubnaya Square as a microcosm of urban society, highlighting the clash between communal ideals and persistent human selfishness. Barnet employed inventive techniques such as zippy montage, freeze-frames, rewinds, flashbacks, stop-motion animation, and extensive location shooting to blend humor with drama, avoiding heavy sentimentality or overt propaganda. His approach emphasized humanist portrayals of ordinary people navigating everyday absurdities and tragedies. These early works established Barnet's signature style of lyrical comedy rooted in social observation and the physical pleasures of daily existence. No additional directorial features from Barnet are documented in the remaining years of the silent period up to 1930, as his output shifted toward the transition to sound in the following decade.

1930s Sound Films

Barnet successfully transitioned to sound cinema with Outskirts (Okraina, 1933), his first sound feature and a major work of the early Soviet sound era. This tragicomic drama is set in a remote Russian village during the 1910s, portraying the effects of World War I and the Russian Revolution on ordinary inhabitants through the experiences of a shoemaker's family and a cross-cultural romance between a German prisoner of war and a local girl amid widespread xenophobia. The film stands out for its pacifist and internationalist perspective, including a notable scene where a proletarian character protests against anti-German prejudice by insisting on shared humanity over nationality. Barnet's handling of trench warfare sequences has been praised for their vivid immediacy and modernity, drawing comparisons to later anti-war classics. Outskirts received a prize at the 1934 Venice Film Festival, affirming its international recognition despite the political pressures evident in its efforts to align with official lines. Building on this shift from his silent-era comedic roots, Barnet continued exploring sound with By the Bluest of Seas (U samogo sinego morya, 1936), his second sound feature, which returned to lighter romantic comedy territory. The film reflects his ongoing adaptation to the new medium while retaining elements of lyrical observation in its portrayal of personal relationships against a collective backdrop. His 1930s output demonstrated an evolution toward blending dramatic depth and poetic sensibility within the constraints of sound technology and Soviet production demands. No major shelved or banned projects from this decade are documented in available sources, though the era's political climate influenced thematic choices across his work.

Wartime and Post-War Work (1940s)

During the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945), Boris Barnet's directing career was largely on hold, as the Soviet film industry shifted focus to wartime propaganda, newsreels, and short patriotic films while major studios were evacuated and resources redirected to the war effort. He did not complete any feature films during these years. In the immediate post-war period, Barnet returned to feature directing with the 1947 spy thriller Podvig razvedchika (The Scout's Exploit, also translated as Secret Agent or The Deed of the Scout). The film centers on a Soviet reconnaissance officer parachuted behind German lines during the war to collect intelligence, sabotage operations, and support local partisans, blending suspense, action sequences, and patriotic themes typical of post-war Soviet cinema. It was commissioned as part of the state's effort to produce ideologically aligned entertainment that celebrated Soviet heroism and intelligence work. Podvig razvedchika became one of the most popular Soviet films of the era, reportedly seen by tens of millions of viewers and remaining a cultural touchstone for its gripping narrative and charismatic lead performance by Pavel Kadochnikov. Critics and audiences praised its skillful pacing, realistic tension, and effective combination of adventure with ideological messaging. This work represented a shift toward more genre-driven storytelling in Barnet's output, adapting his earlier dramatic approach to the post-war preference for heroic spy narratives while achieving widespread public appeal.

Later Films (1950s–1960s)

In the 1950s and 1960s, Boris Barnet continued his directing career with a series of feature films that often returned to lighter genres, including comedies, while also exploring dramatic themes. His postwar output included Bountiful Summer (1951), a lyrical comedy set in a Crimean collective farm depicting romance and everyday life; Lyana (1955), a drama with Moldovan cultural elements; and The Poet (1956), a satirical comedy. Notable subsequent works included The Wrestler and the Clown (1957), co-directed with Konstantin Yudin, a biographical drama depicting the lives and friendship of renowned wrestler Ivan Poddubny and clown Anatoly Durov, who rise to fame after humble beginnings in a circus act. Barnet followed this with Annushka (1959), a drama centered on a Russian woman who endures the loss of her husband and home during the war but perseveres to raise her children with courage and dignity. His last completed works were Alyonka (1962) and Polustanok (Whistle-Stop, 1963). Soviet critics frequently judged Barnet's films from this era as lacking in revolutionary credentials, contributing to perceptions of declining favor or relevance. In 1965, during preproduction on the historical drama The Ambassadors' Plot, Barnet committed suicide at age 62, reportedly out of despair that his artistic gifts had faded or that the project would not come to fruition. This marked the end of his directorial career, which had spanned nearly four decades.

Personal Life

Family and Relationships

Boris Barnet was married four times. His last marriage was to actress Alla Georgievna Kazanskaya (1920–2008), who was his fourth wife; she performed at the Vakhtangov State Academic Theatre and later the Moscow Art Theatre, and worked as a drama teacher. The couple resided in Moscow, where they raised their daughter Olga Borisovna Barnet (1951–2021), who became an actress known for roles in Soviet cinema, including as Kris Kelvin's mother in Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972). Barnet's family life remained largely private, centered in Moscow amid the demands of his filmmaking career, with limited public documentation beyond his relationship with Kazanskaya and Olga. Details of his earlier marriages, to Natalia Glan (1926–1927), Yelena Kuzmina (1928–1936), and Valentina Barnet, are limited in available sources, and no known children resulted from them.

Challenges in Soviet Context

Boris Barnet's filmmaking career unfolded under the stringent ideological constraints of the Soviet film industry, where artistic expression was often subordinated to political imperatives. His early work, such as the 1927 comedy The Girl with the Hatbox, encountered unfavorable reception from authorities, likely due to its lighthearted and less overtly propagandistic tone, prompting Barnet to direct a more celebratory film marking the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. The 1940s brought heightened challenges amid wartime and postwar pressures. Barnet's lyrical and often humanistic approach, which prioritized subtle humor and individual experience over didactic heroism, frequently clashed with the demands of socialist realism enforced after the 1930s. In the postwar years, these tensions included the long delay of his film The Old Horseman (filmed 1940, released 1959). Such episodes illustrate how Barnet's work was periodically suppressed or curtailed by the Soviet authorities' emphasis on conformity.

Death

Circumstances and Final Project

In the early 1960s, Barnet faced mounting personal and professional difficulties within the Soviet film industry, which contributed to a state of profound despair. On January 8, 1965, at the age of 62, he committed suicide by hanging in a hotel room in Riga, Latvian SSR. At the time of his death, Barnet was in the preproduction stage of his final project, The Ambassadors' Plot (Zagovor poslov), a historical drama that was later completed by director Nikolai Rozantsev in 1966. The project had been intended as a return to feature filmmaking after his television work and documentary efforts in the preceding years, but the circumstances surrounding his suicide prevented his further involvement. Official reports and contemporary accounts confirm the cause of death as suicide amid reported struggles with depression and career disillusionment.

Legacy

Awards and Honors

Boris Barnet received the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR in 1935, recognizing his significant contributions to Soviet cinema as a director and actor during the transition to sound films. In 1948, he was awarded the Stalin Prize second degree for his direction of the film The Scout's Exploit (Podvig razvedchika, 1947), which achieved wide popularity and critical success in the postwar period. He was further named Honored Worker of Arts of the Ukrainian SSR in 1951, reflecting his ongoing influence and work within the Soviet film industry. Additionally, Barnet's early sound film Outskirts (Okraina, 1933) received the Prize of the Soviet Films Program at the Venice International Film Festival in 1934, marking an early international acknowledgment of his work.

Critical Reception and Influence

Boris Barnet has long been recognized as the lyrical voice in Soviet cinema, distinguished by a gentle, anti-rhetorical sensibility that emphasized humanistic portrayals of everyday life, individual destinies, and a Chekhovian blend of comedy and tragedy over ideological didacticism or epic montage. His films stood apart from the dominant traditions of contemporaries like Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Dovzhenko, favoring improvisation, irony, minimal gestures, and an observational style that allowed life to "seep into and wash away" prescribed stereotypes. Critics have praised this approach for conveying the intensity of happiness, physical pleasure, and inevitable melancholy in relationships, rendering Barnet a major alternative master whose work avoided the lofty rhetoric common in Soviet film. Although somewhat marginalized in official Soviet histories for perceived "infantilism" and lack of heroic weight, Barnet's reputation underwent significant revival in the West beginning with a landmark retrospective at the Locarno Film Festival in 1985, which initiated broader rediscovery of his oeuvre. This resurgence continued through subsequent tributes, including retrospectives at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, where his films were framed as poetic visions of the quotidian that resolved tensions between individual and collective fates without rigid propaganda. Particular attention has focused on early works such as Girl with a Hatbox (1927) and Outskirts (1933), with the latter acclaimed as a masterpiece of early sound cinema for its character-driven realism, inventive soundtrack, raw emotion, and implicit pacifism. Barnet's humanistic subtlety and physical directness have influenced later filmmakers and critics, notably within the French New Wave—Jacques Rivette hailed him as the greatest Soviet director after Eisenstein, while Jean-Luc Godard expressed similar reverence—and in post-Thaw Soviet cinema through directors like Otar Ioseliani, Georgiy Daneliya, and Marlen Khutsiev who extended his lyrical comic and dramatic impulses. His legacy endures as a counter-current to more didactic Soviet traditions, celebrated for an instinctive celebration of life that combines joy, melancholy, and erotic collectivism in works like By the Bluest of Seas (1935).
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