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Ménilmontant

France

1926

38 Min
Black and White
Silent
  • Currently 4.4/5 Stars.
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DIR Dimitri Kirsanoff

PROD Dimitri Kirsanoff

SCR Dimitri Kirsanoff

DP Dimitri Kirsanoff, Léonce Crouan

CAST Nadia Sibirskaïa, Yolande Beaulieu, Guy Belmont, Jean Pasquier, Maurice Ronsard

ED Dimitri Kirsanoff

PROD DES Dimitri Kirsanoff

Synopsis

Dimitri Kirsanoff’s film centers on two young country girls who flee to the city after their parents are brutally murdered (we are given very few details as to who did this or why). The film’s narrative is very sketchy, as there are no intertitles, and the two girls have similar features and are dressed similarly throughout most of the film. One of the girls, played by the wonderful Nadia Sibirskaia (Kirsanoff’s wife), goes off with a man while her sister stays home in their tenement. When she returns home she soon has a baby, and her sister goes off (presumably as a prostitute) with the man. Sibirskaia presumably becomes homeless until she is ultimately reunited with her sister. The man they went away with earlier shows up again, only to be killed by a random criminal. —mseverson

Director

Original

Dimitri Kirsanoff

Dimitri Kirsanoff (Russian: Дими́трий Кирса́нов) (6 March 1899 – 11 February 1957) was an early filmmaker, considered part of the French Impressionist movement in film. He is known for his inexpensively made experimental films.

Kirsanoff was born Markus David Sussmanovitch Kaplan (Маркус Давид Зусманович Каплан) in Tartu (then Juryev), Estonia, then Russian Empire in 1899. In the early 1920s he moved to Paris and became involved in cinema through playing cello in the orchestra at showings. He began making films on his own, and never worked with a production company. —Wikipedia 

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who told you this room exists?

11May12

Nadia Sibirskaia's acting / beauty is beyond mesmerizing.. i'm in love

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chanandre

28Mar12

The best short-film I'll ever see...and Pauline was right on the money too....

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Juurakkotukka

30Nov11

Q: What was your favorite movie in your entire life? Pauline: In my entire life? Well, there's a French movie that probably you've never heard of that I like best... Q: And what was the French movie? Pauline: "Menilmontant," a silent movie made in 1924 by Dmitri Kirsanov starring his beautiful Russian-born wife, Nadia Sibirskaya. ("Afterglow: A Last Conversation With Pauline Kael" by Francis Davis)

Low and 2 others like this

who told you this room exists?, Emre

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Dave

30Jul11

In terms of technical filmmaking and editing, this is the best I have seen in all of 1920s. It's incredible stuff and when you see it for the first time you will be left marveling at how far ahead of its time it is stylistically.

Antonius-Blovk, dust in love

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W184

The Forgotten: The One-Man Band

By David Cairns on January 19, 2012

Two sisters are torn apart by romantic entanglements in a Paris slum. Dimitri Kirsanoff achieves unique screen poetry.

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