There is a lot going on in this 90-year-old short film written and directed by Dimitri Kirsanoff. The Estonian-born French filmmaker was only in his 20s when he made this and it was still very early in his career. He only made one film before that. "Ménilmontant" is the name of a french arrondissement and this is where the action takes place apparently. The film starts shockingly right away, especially for standards back then and many people were probably really offended that they put a murder on screen. Méliès, de Chomon, Chaplin, Lloyd and Keaton never would have done that. By 1926, all of these had already moved away from short films and into full feature films or even pretty much stopped making films altogether. There was really only one scene in this film that I quite enjoyed. It was the (stunning) lead character sitting on the bench near the old man who was constantly chewing. Obviously this is not enough for over half an hour and at times, without intertitles, it was fairly difficult to understand what was going on exactly. Not recommended.
Review of Ménilmontant
