| Boris Barnet | |
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Boris Barnet |
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| Born | Boris Vasilyevich Barnet 18 June 1902 Moscow, Russian Empire (now Russia) |
| Died | 8 January 1965 (aged 62) Riga, Soviet Union (now Latvia) |
| Occupation | Film director, screenwriter |
| Years active | 1927 – 1963 |
| Spouse | Natalia Glan (1926–1927) Yelena Alexandrovna Kuzmina (1928–1936) Valentina Barnet Alla Kazanskaya |
Boris Vasilyevich Barnet (Russian: Борис Васильевич Барнет; 18 June 1902 – 8 January 1965) was a Soviet film director, actor and screenwriter. He directed 27 films between 1927 and 1963.
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Barnet was born in Moscow. 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 the 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 Russian silent film classics.
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. Amongst Barnet's masterpieces, we find Okraina (1933), a pacifist story acclaimed at the first Venice Film Festival and spoofed by Pavel Lutsik in his award-winning 1998 remake.
Barnet's postwar work is exemplified by Secret Agent, the first Soviet spy movie. 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.[1]
It was Barnet's gift of artisic 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".[1] Among Russian filmmakers professing their admiration for Barnet was Andrei Tarkovsky.
After some years of artistic silence the alcoholism-prone director committed suicide in Riga, Latvian SSR. He was survived by wife Alla Kazanskaya and daughter Olga Barnet.