"Menilmontant" [1924-25]

"Menilmontant" [1924-25]

Rejissyor: Dimitri Kirsanoff. French avant-garde cinema at its best. A fine commentary by David Badagnani... Dimitri Kirsanoff's Menilmontant (1925) researched by David Badagnani Directed by Dimitri Kirsanoff (b. Dorpat, Estonia, March 6, 1899; d. France, February 11 1957, of a heart attack) Cast: Nadia Sibirskaia (Younger sister), Yolande Beaulieu (Older sister), Guy Belmont (Young man), Jean Pasquier, Maurice Ronsard. Estonian-born filmmaker Dimitri Kirsanoff emigrated to Paris with his parents in the early 1920s. There he trained as a musician, studying cello at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris and playing music for silent films. He quickly became associated with the circle of young avant-garde ("impressionist") French filmmakers, and began making his own independently produced films on tiny budgets. These stylish, original, early films earned him a considerable critical reputation and were later deemed precursors of both French "poetic realism" and Italian neo-realism. Kirsanoff's first wife, the beautiful Nadia Sibirskaïa (born Jeanne Brunet in Redon, France, 1901), was the principal actress in most of his early films. (She also appeared in Jean Renoir's famous Crime of M. Lange (1935).) Kirsanoff's second wife, Monique Kirsanoff (b. 1913) is the editor of numerous French films. Menilmontant (1925), Kirsanoff's second film, is also his best known. (His first film, L'Ironie du destin, completed in 1923, is now lost). Kirsanoff not only directed, but co-photographed, edited, and produced the film for his own company. Menilmontant was filmed during the winter of 1924-25, primarily on location in Menilmontant, a poor working class suburb on the eastern edge of Paris which gives the film its name. Originally entitled Les cents pas (The Hundred Steps), the film was at first rejected by Paris film distributors. It was subsequently picked up by film presenter Jean Tedesco for the second season of his series at the Vieux-Colombier theater, and came to be known as Menilmontant. Kirsanoff's film

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