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Dimitri Kirsanoff's 1926 classic Ménilmontant, which is either a short feature or a very long short, is one of the great things. If you haven't already seen it, you have just been handed an urgent mission.Related to the impressionist school of Epstein, Dulac, amd Delluc, but not actually part of that gang or, seemingly, associated with any school, movement or company, Kirsanoff, an Estonian emigré, fashioned a silent film without intertitles that plays like an unholy mash-up of Chaplin and David Lynch.But little of Kirsanoff's other work is seen or discussed. A few lovely shorts are available on YouTube, but what became of him when he was absorbed into the film industry and had to become a professional?Le crâneur (The Hotshot) is the answer. It's a fifties crime movie inhabiting a world familiar to cinephiles from the movies of Jean-Pierre Melville, only the gangsters don't wear white...