Ménilmontant (1924-1925)
By Dimitri Kirsanov
1924-25, 25 minutes Cast: Nadia Sibirskaia, Yolande Beaulieu, Guy Belmont, Jean Pasquier Produced by Dimitri Kirsanov. Scenario by Dimitri Kirsanov. Cinematography by Dimitri Kirsanov. Edited by Dimitri Kirsanov. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.37:1 format. Ménilmontant by Donato Totaro Every now and then you are caught unaware by an unfamiliar film. Exactly that happened when I watched a 16mm print of a film I was preparing to teach, the 1924 short French film Ménilmontant, by Russian emigré Dimitri Kirsanov. After previewing it I calmly walked back into the projector room, threaded it up and re-watched it. I did it one more time. The film's story is pure melodrama, maybe even banal, but its visual treatment is pure poetry. I stress visual, since this is one of the earliest films that I know of to completely refrain from using any explanatory intertitles (French film scholar Richard Abel speculates that it is the first French film to do so). [1] What is fascinating is that director Kirsanov begins the film with an audacious and brutal montage flurry which contains several split second shots that foreshadow Eisentein's famous Odessa Steps sequence of one year later. But Kirsanov's v…
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