DESCRIPTION

I first heard of Boris Barnet at the Telluride Film Festival in the mid-80s-- a rather dour intro by the historian Ian Christie was odd prepararation for two absolutely delightful silent comedies, The Girl With a Hatbox (starring Anna Sten, whom Sam Goldwyn would fail to make into the next Garbo) and The House on Trubnaya Street. Outskirts is Barnet's first sound film, and a darker work, though not as it is often described, purely a serious one.

The setting is the year 1914, first in a total backwater (we never know exactly where this town is, or if it's attached to something bigger, it's one town out of a thousand in Tsarist Russia) and then, as war breaks out, at the front as well. The plot is simply a series of episodes, initially comic though increasingly grim, depicting the ordinary folk. Though war is here and the great Soviet revolution is coming, the movie seems to offer little more than a sardonic Russian shrug toward such events, the people much more interested in love and clowning around. Like some other early Soviet talkies, Barnet makes a virtue of primitive Soviet sound technique by using sound expressionistically; the difference between this and a film like Pudovkin's Deserter is that Barnet often uses sound to blow a raspberry at whatever grandiose thing is supposed to be happening.

«Окраина» — советский фильм режиссёра Бориса Барнета.
Приз Венецианского кинофестиваля 1934 года.
По одноимённой повести Константина Финна. Фильм рассказывает об обстановке в России в годы Первой мировой войны. Один из лучших антивоенных фильмов XX века.
Жизнь простых людей в провинциальном городке нарушается начавшейся войной. Патриотическая молодежь уходит на фронт, а в город начинают прибывать пленные немцы. Постепенно народ начинает понимать, что война ему не нужна…