Boris Barnet

Boris Vasilyevich Barnet (; 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. Early years Boris Barnet was born in Moscow. His grandfather Thomas Barnet was a printer who moved to the Russian Empire from the United Kingdom in the 19th century. 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.