Miss Mend

Director: Boris Barnet

1926 / 270min / DCP

For his inaugural assignment at the Moscow-based Mezhrabpom-Rus, Barnet co-directed this three-part, American-style spy series with the studio’s main script editor Fyodor Otsep. Taking their cues from the Hollywood suspense films of “super couple” Fairbanks and Pickford—so popular with Russian audiences at the time—as well as German expressionist films like Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, Barnet and Otsep devised a heady aesthetic fusion of action, science fiction, and slapstick so dangerously and deliciously decadent as to draw the ire of Soviet critics on its way to becoming one of Russia’s most successful mass entertainments of its decade.

The film will be presented with a score by Robert Israel and a 10-minute intermission

Distributor: FPA Classics

Part of Boris Barnet A Soviet Poet