The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Barnet, Boris Vasil’evich

Born June 5 (18), 1902, in Moscow; died Jan. 8, 1965, in Riga. Soviet film director and actor; Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1935); Honored Art Worker of the Ukrainian SSR (1951). Member of the CPSU beginning in 1943.

Barnet studied at the State Technicum of Cinematography in the studio of L. V. Kuleshov. He began work in films as an actor in 1924 and later worked as a director (the comedy The Girl With a Box, and the historical revolutionary film Moscow in October, both made in 1927; and the satirical comedy The House on the Trubnaia, 1928). Barnet’s first sound film was The Outskirts (1933)—his greatest work as a director. The film The Deed of the Agent (1947), in which Barnet played the role of the German general Kühn, was devoted to the events of the Great Patriotic War. His later films include Bountiful Summer (1951), The Poet (1959), The Wrestler and the Clown (1957; made with K. K. Iudin), Annushka (1959), and Alenka (1962; based on a work by S. Antonov). Barnet received the State Prize of the USSR (1948). He was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor.

WORKS

“Kak ia stal rezhisserom.” In the collection Kak ia stal rezhis-serom. Moscow, 1946.

References in periodicals archive

The film "By the Bluest of Seas", directed by Boris Barnet and Samed Mardanov, in 1935, was included in the list of the best films in the world based on the survey conducted among influential critics on occasion of the 100th anniversary of the world cinema.

Bulgaria marks 120th anniversary of Azerbaijani cinema

A hard-core cinephile whose filmmaking taste owes as much to the heroic, sculptural, and populist Soviet portraiture of Boris Barnet, Alexander Dovzhenko, Sergei Eisenstein, and Dziga Vertov as to the expressive and expressionist lighting and color schemes of such Hollywood artisans as John Ford, Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray, and Tourneur, Costa has gone so far as to describe Horse Money as a "horror action film"; the seeming paradox of marrying the blunt realities of a Ventura and a Vitalina with the studio-contrived artifice of a Lewton quickie is central both to his methods and to the philosophical suppositions underlying them.

Historical present: Jonathan Rosenbaum on Pedro Costa's Horse Money

However, though A Priceless Head (Betsennaia golova, Boris Barnet, 1942) did include a Jewish character, reviewers omitted his presence because they "lacked any clearly acceptable way to discuss this dimension" (86).

First Films of the Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and the Genocide of the Jews, 1938-1946

Nevertheless, Widdis deserves much praise for her often impressive partial, local insights, best exemplified in her subtle and sustained readings of relatively little-known films such as the comedies of Iakov Protazanov and Boris Barnet, Grigoru Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg's The Devil's Wheel, and Medvedkin's film-train shorts as well as his longer 19 30s comedies.

Visions of a New Land: Soviet Film from the Revolution to the Second World War

Directed by Boris Barnet. Screenplay, Fyodr Knorr, from his story and play.

Resulting melange is less successful than in some of Boris Barnet's other works, like "A Good Lad," but still tells a satisfyingly dramatic story.

ONE NIGHT

"By the Bluest of Seas" (1936) is a Soviet romantic comedy film by Russian director Boris Barnet. This was the first sound film in Azerbaijan.

Filming locations you can't miss

Directed by Boris Barnet. Screenplay, Aleksci Kapler, Pyotr Pavlenko.

Never released commercially, it was the third film by prolific helmer Boris Barnet to have been banned.

A GOOD LAD

Directed by Boris Barnet. Screenplay, Evgeni Pomeshchikov, N.

BEAUTIFUL SUMMER