Brumes d'automne (1929)
Directed by Dimitri Kirsanoff

Film Review

Brumes d'automne runs to just under twelve minutes but it is one of the most hauntingly beautiful of all films, a succinct cinematic poem that expresses so much about the pain and futility of human existence and leaves you moved to tears by the subtlety of its artistry.  This is the most perfect and most eloquent of all the films made by Dimitri Kirsanoff, one of the leading figures in the Film Impressionist movement that was active in France throughout  the 1920s.  As in his earlier masterpiece, Ménilmontant (1926), Kirsanoff crafts a visual poem of extraordinary power that resonates with human feeling.  The bleak autumn landscape evokes  the sense of desolation and disillusionment that we all know so well when we reflect on the disappointments in our lives, feelings that are rendered just as effectively in the captivating portraits of the director's muse Nadia Sibirskaïa.

Of the four seasons, autumn is the one that seems to chime most easily with the human spirit, a period of tender melancholy and mournful regret that comforts and consoles in a way that no other season can.  John Keats' famous poem (Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness...) captures the essential beauty of autumn in a few stanzas, and Kirsanoff's mesmeric short film does the same, heightening our appreciation of a strange and wonderful phase of the year which, of all the seasons, is the only one that allows us to make meaning of the nonsense of life.  A muddy landscape inhabited only by the sad skeletal hulks of trees denuded of their leaves, wreathed in a cold mist that washes out the distance into a dreary grey as raindrops drip like tears into overflowing lakes and puddles, and all the while Nature's heart feels fit to burst.  Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?  Think not of them, thou hast thy music too...  As we watch in rapture Kirsanoff's haunting elegy on life, the solemn music of autumn rings in our ears and our hearts.

Film Synopsis

As autumn cloaks the world with her customary melancholia, as cold mists descend and browning leaves fall from quivering trees onto the sodden ground, a solitary woman looks back on her past life beside an open fire.  Tearfully, she throws faded letters onto the hungry flames as memories tinged with sorrow and sadness flicker through her mind.  Later, she leaves the sanctuary of her home and ventures out of doors, to seek a reassuring communion with the sweet solemnity of autumn...