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Dimitri Kirsanoff

Dimitri Kirsanoff

Directing

Biography

Dimitri Kirsanoff (Russian: Дими́трий Кирса́нов) 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 in Tartu (then Juryev), Estonia, then Russian Empire in 1899 to Lithuanian Jewish parents. 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. Kirsanoff was at the forefront of Parisian avant-garde filmmaking thanks to works such as Ménilmontant (1926), which combined soviet style montage with hand-held camerawork and lyrically composed static shots. Kirsanoff's early silent films, many starring his first wife Nadia Sibirskaia, are considered his best works. With the coming of sound the quality of his output declined, though he continued to direct commercial ventures into the 1950's. He was married to the actress Nadia Sibirskaïa who starred in several of his early films. His second marriage was to editor Monique Kirsanoff.

Known For

Le Crâneur
5.4

A singer tries to rescue a man drawn into the drug trade.

Le Crâneur

1955
Irony of Fate
9.0

No description available.

Irony of Fate

1924
Tonight the Skirts Fly
5.5

At Christmastime, the love affairs of five clothing models working for Pierre Roussel, a renowned Paris fashion designer. Marlène hesitates between two suitors. Blanche, who loves Jean, Roussel's son, wants him to talk to his father about their relationship. Catherine learns that her lover has a wife and two kids. Jeannette throws herself into the arms of an Oriental prince. In despair the fifth one attempts to commit suicide...

Tonight the Skirts Fly

1956
Ménilmontant
7.4

A pair of sisters leave the country for the city after their parents are slaughtered in a mysterious axe murder.

Ménilmontant

1926
The Midnight Witness
10.0

Jacques Montet, a successful crime story writer, has already written a hundred books and would like to call it quits now to devote himself to loftier writing. But his wife, a cold-hearted, money-minded, bossy woman won't allow. All the more as she is the one who supplies Jacques with the plots of his detective stories. When Jacques, yearning for true love, meets young, pretty Muriel, he can't stand the situation any longer. Fortunately - for him - the plot of the 101st detective story imagined by his wife is about a ... perfect crime. He simply has to follow her instructions to ... get rid of her. Everything goes according to plan until Jacques discovers a scary detail: the presence of a mysterious witness on the scene of the crime.

The Midnight Witness

1953
Miss Catastrophe
9.0

A talented but crazy painter, Elvire Mercier agrees to sell one of her canvases to Pierre Leroy, a rich heir. But after a string of misunderstandings, she hands her painting over to a swindler. And her problems have only just begun.

Miss Catastrophe

1957
The Kidnapping
6.9

Hans has killed the dog of Firmin, a shepherd. Wild with rage, Firmin kidnaps Elsi, Hans' fiancée and locks her up at his home. Hans, a peddler, vows to find the missing girl. This is what he does and he manages, with the help of Mânu, the village idiot, to give Elsi a letter. On seeing her, the changeling falls in love at first sight with the young woman. Elsi soon realizes that Mânu can become her instrument of vengeance.

The Kidnapping

1934
No image
N/A

No description available.

Scrupule

1935
Various Facts About Paris
9.0

Full of hopes, the young Raymonde leaves her country life in north of France to work in Paris. She promises her first love, François, that she will return to marry him. But their lives take differents paths, even if they never stop loving each other.

Various Facts About Paris

1950
The Midnight Airplane
10.0

During a stopover, Morel, an airline pilot and Colette spin the perfect love. She hides from him that she is compromised in the actions of a band of criminals. She manages to escape her dangerous friends while a shootout wipes them all out.

The Midnight Airplane

1938
The Fountain of Arethusa
6.5

“La Fontaine d'Aréthuse” opens with what has been described as a “shimmering wash of sound in the piano, octave leaps in the left hand passing above and below repeated chords in the right,” a tune which apparently suggests the splashing waters of a fountain. The story “told” by the music involves a naked water goddess on the river shore, who is pursued by a hunter, before disappearing into thin air to join her water once again.

The Fountain of Arethusa

1936
Autumn Mists
6.4

An early impressionist short featuring a woman who dreams of, and escapes into, an autumn forest.

Autumn Mists

1929
Franco de port
8.0

Monsieur Fred is a friendly Southerner who recruits pretty girls down on their luck to send to South America. After some dramatic incidents and an eventful chase, a policeman manages to lock up the gang he runs.

Franco de port

1937
The Most Beautiful Girl in the World
8.0

An American billionaire who travels incognito falls in love with a blind shepherdess whose twin sister will take the place on the wedding day.

The Most Beautiful Girl in the World

1938
Backward Season
6.7

A woman waits for her husband, a woodcutter, during long lonely days. She becomes weary and leaves him to live with her sister. He takes the news with a look of resignation, but the next day she returns to wait for him again.

Backward Season

1950
Two Friends
7.0

The story closes in Paris in January 1871, at the height of the siege, and introduces the main character, Monsieur Morissot, a watchmaker who has enrolled in the National Guard. Morissot, who is bored, hungry, and depressed, is walking along the boulevard when by chance he bumps into an old friend, Monsieur Sauvage, with whom he used to go fishing before the war. The two old friends reminisce over several glasses of absinthe in a café;, talking wistfully of the pleasant Sunday afternoons they used to spend fishing on the banks of the Seine before the war. Tipsy from the absinthe, the friends, for want of anything else to do, decide to go fishing in their old spot, and having obtained a laissez-passer from their officer, walk along the river to Argenteuil, a few miles west of the city, in the no man's land between the French and Prussian lines.

Two Friends

1946
No image
8.0

No description available.

Destin

1927
No image
9.0

No description available.

Sables

1928
The Cradles
7.4

Les Berceaux is about the dedicated sailors who venture out into the deepest ocean, and the wives who must await their return. The woman sits in her living room, gently rocking her infant’s cradle as she sings, the movement mimicking the rolling motion of the ocean waves. Many men will lose their lives to the ocean’s vast waters, but the juxtaposition of death and life (in the cradle) suggests an endless and noble cycle. Kirsanoff imaginatively places a rear-projection screen outside the woman’s window, through which, as she sings, we can watch the ocean waves lapping up against the shore, or the ship charging majestically over the water. Also worth noting is that the film was photographed by Boris Kaufman, who later also shot On the Waterfront (1954) and 12 Angry Men (1957). —Shortcutcinema.blogspot.pt

The Cradles

1931
No image
7.0

In a slum set to be demolished, dramas are played out among the picturesque slum dwellers, including a young couple who, denounced by the police, are forced to leave home.

Sunless Neighborhood

1946