Autumn Mist is an amazing French short film. It’s directed by Dimitri Krisanoff. It’s a 12 minute silent film that was released in 1929.

The main theme of the 12 minute movie is that a woman is left by her lover and is dealing with the emotions that follow her loss. There’s a lot of focus on her face conveying the emotion of hopelessness and sadness.

There’s a moment where it starts raining and the camera focuses on the rain hitting the ground. This moment shifts the tone to let the viewers know this is her physical manifestation of her emotions happening on scene. This is later backed up by the fact that when the sun comes out we see her shift from her dark thoughts to seeing the light. Both physically and metaphorically.

Overall this is a great example of how shots can convey emotions. The shots can tell just as much of a story as if someone was reading the words to the story to you.

Overall it was a great watch.

-Quincy Harris

What I took away from this there is a woman who is remembering what I presume is a past relationship with a man. I got that impression because the close up shots of her looking into the fire would cut to memories of the man in her relationship. Also, when she threw the letter in the fire that reinforced that she is maybe trying to forget this person or the memories they have had together. I think the editing also worked well for when the camera was cutting back and forth between nature and her face and how that was almost reinforcing what her feelings were. To me, it was very abstract and its hard for me to explain why the editing works but none-the-less I think it did a good job of evoking emotion through solely visuals.

The 1928 silent film “Autumn Mists” by Kirsanoff Dimitri excellently utilizes montage to convey thought and emotion. By centering the story and visuals on that of a singular character and editing everything to revolve around in some way, the woman’s thoughts and feelings embody the film wholesale – and through its editing, we learn more about her.

For instance, the beginning sequence of her staring at the fire, clutching the letter, and weeping. No dialogue or text tells us explicitly what is happening, but given the tone and emotion of the scene we can assume it is from a wayward lover of some kind. Her romantic isolation is reflected through the movie’s almost exclusive attention to her and her alone.

Furthermore, long shots of her crying face are spliced in with somber nature imagery, like rain. While there is no particular scenic correlation, we can infer a sort of emotional or thematic correlation as these chronologically discordant images come together to further enhance the melancholy of the film.

In Dimitri Kirsanoff’s film of “Brumes d’automne,” the audience is introduced to the back and forth of a woman alone and nature. Throughout the course of the film, the scenes are split in between the woman and nature and then begin merging into a single entity.

For the woman, she is seen holding some letters she either written herself or someone gave them to her. A flashback with then occur afterwards that explain parts of this woman’s life. While the audience is unable to see what is written on the letter, one can get an understanding of what those letters are about through the flashbacks.

After the audience sees the woman interacting with the letter and her flashback of them, she will then burn the letter. This is shown through the chimney in a separate shot about their burning being released into nature. For a while the woman stays inside of her house and not venture out, but towards the end of the film she eventually does. The montage between the woman and nature reveal how the two are connecting to one another and in the end, become one with the woman’s shadow being merged into the elements of nature.

While the shots change drastically throughout the entire film, they explain the thoughts of the woman clever that help explain the woman. The shots at the beginning felt organized yet unstable as they kept switching from one particular focus. As the film progresses, the shots get less organized to where one cannot know what happened to the woman.

Dimitri Kirsanoff’s “Brumes d’automne” showcases an editing style that is in the favor of using montage as a way to give insight into how the character reflects or is feeling. The main character reads and interacts with letters and how she feels about what is being said, even though the audience do not get to see what the letter says, can get an idea of how it effects the main character.

She will read for amount and then reflect whether that brings the audience to a flashback of sorts or direct action in tossing the letter into the fire. paired with the music and the visuals the audience can get a feeling of somberness or depression. I personally when watching was made uneasy by some of the sound choice that were made. This could have been a tool to help the audience get a better idea of how the main character was feeling at the time of reading these letter. For me the use of montage worked sometimes, I did find that some montages worked better than others in this experimental short, were for some I was focused more on trying to understand or making meaning out of what I was seeing.

Here is my Make Space Video. My only issue with this video is the beginning sequence for how long it originally took and had to shorten it down for time. I hope you all enjoy it.

https://youtu.be/qIpIHRvoZn4