Ever since Vladimir Lenin and his cronies took over Russia in 1917, the country's film industry primarily concentrated on message movies that touted the communist form of government. Even though Russian filmmakers were masters of editing in the 1920s, most of their product was serious. Boris Barnet didn't fit into that mode. Somehow Stalin and his lieutenants allowed the Moscovite to make breezy, ofttimes funny movies, even though the dictator was generally displeased with Barnet's work. One prime example of his work is his March 1936 "By the Bluest of Seas," a musical rom-com Soviet style.
Barnet's second feature film shows the director's adept handling of merging the symbolic elements of nature with the human drama unfolding on the screen. 'By the Bluest of Seas" follows a pair of friends whose ship has sunk. The two are rescued by fishermen and taken to an island off the coast of Azerbaijan in the Caspian Sea. Blond-haired Yussuf (Lev Sverdin) and Alyoshia (Nikolai Kryuchkov) meet Mariya (Yelena Kuzmina), head of the local collective. Both seamen are infatuated by her, and each attempt to gain her interest. Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum says Barnet's film is so brilliant because "We wind up feeling affection for the three leads, partly because of the affection they show for one another and partly because of the gusto with which they show it."
French film critic Bernard Eisenschitz unlocks the secret of Barnet's genius, one of the lesser known talented directors in Soviet cinema. "His films convey more than most the intensity of happiness, the physical pleasure of meeting and contact, the inevitable tragedy of relationships," Eisenschitz writes. Mariya, who's intrigued by the pair of energetic friends, is withholding information from the two that'll make all the difference in the world in their relationship.
Astute observers note "By the Bluest of Seas" contains a number of silent movie elements, with long, quiet sequences and inter-titles long since gone from cinema. Critic Anthony Nield drew parallels between Barnet and Jean Vigo's 1934 masterpiece "L'Atalante," while Australia's National Film and Sound Archive wrote Barnet's intention "was to carry the pleasures of silent cinema into the sound age. Barnet is always trying to return his cinema to a pure match between expressive image and a musical soundscape accompaniment, always emphasizing charming gesture, comic speed and music over spoken dialogue."
The power-elite of the Soviet government ripped into "By the Bluest of Seas," claiming the film failed to reflect the realities of the country's proletariat. That explains why the movie was so hard to view until 2012, when it became available to home media by a Russian company. Besides the rare screening, few got the opportunity to see it. Those that did placed it as one of 1,000 films making the prestigious list in 'TSPDY: They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?'
