Kirsanoff's tiresome melodrama goes on for 20 minutes. There are some admirable things here: no title cards, well composed shots. But the quality of the print, combined with the rapid-fire montage (Kirsanoff being inspired by Soviet editing), makes for a headache. His story, the melodrama of a cad and two women who sleep with him, and a third one who dies, isn't particularly new, interesting or insightful. And a scene about eating sausage goes nowhere. Pauline Kael, that critical fraud, stated a couple of years ago that, at the moment, this was the greatest movie she'd ever seen. If you belong to the cult of Ms. Kael and haven't seen this movie, you can find it on the New York Film Annex's video series of Experimental Films, on #18. But it's not worth it.
Review of Ménilmontant
