(1957)
directed by Mikhail Kalatozov
Death during war time is particularly devastating to those who are are left behind. This is because those who die are often young and because an individual’s death seems so meaningless amidst all the other deaths. Scholars estimate that Russia lost twenty-seven million people during the second World War.
Despite winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1958, the sublime “The Cranes Are Flying” doesn’t get the amount of attention it deserves. This film was unknown to me when I started writing this book. I am profoundly grateful to the Criterion Channel streaming service for bringing this extraordinary work of art to my attention.
When the subject of war movies comes up, one’s first thought is likely to be of a heroic figure along the lines of Kirk Douglas’ character in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, “Paths of Glory.” “The Cranes Are Flying” is most unusual because it is a war story told from a woman’s point of view. The film focuses on the story of Veronica and, by extension, on the stories of millions of Russian women whose partners went to the front.
“The Cranes Are Flying” is also extraordinary because it tells its story primarily through its cinematic virtuosity. I paused the film over and over again in order to absorb the beauty of a particular scene or to re-watch a particular sequence. The director, Mikhail Kalatozov, deploys what he calls an “emotional camera,” his term for the elaborate handheld takes that express his characters’ feelings in purely visual terms.
Mikhail Kalatozov’s film is set during the second World War and begins by telling the story of the tender romance between Veronica and Boris. Their love affair comes to an abrupt halt when Boris enlists in the Soviet army immediately after the German invasion is announced without waiting to be drafted. Veronica is left to try and fend off the advances of Boris’ cousin, Mark. Mark is a talented pianist who has managed to avoid military service.
The events that follow are harrowing in the extreme. Boris is among the first to die but is reported to his family as missing in action. Veronica suffers a series of traumatic experiences. The traffic and crowds in the streets prevent her from reaching Boris to say goodbye as he leaves for the front. Her parents are killed in a bomb raid. Boris’ letters stop coming. Finally, during another bomb raid, she is raped by Boris’ cousin Mark. We are shocked when, worn down by Mark’s advances, she agrees to marry him.
The narrative structure of the film traces Veronica’s fall and redemption. In the first half of the film, she is perceived by those around her as having committed the worst offence a woman on the home front could commit, infidelity to a soldier. The second half of the film traces her emotional and spiritual rehabilitation. “The Cranes Are Flying” champions Veronica’s right to live her life as she sees fit. It also champions her right to make mistakes along the way. In all of the film’s most emotionally charged scenes, when Veronica rushes to her parents’ apartment only to discover that it no longer exists, when she flees from Mark’s advances, and when she runs to the railway bridge in order to throw herself off, the camera stays close by her side. The camera invites the viewer to be both physically “by her side” and emotionally “on her side.”
The way the camera in “The Cranes Are Flying” stays close by Veronica’s side reminds me of the way the director and cinematographer Alfonso Cuaron moves his camera side by side with the nanny Cleo as she wades into violently crashing waves to save one of the children from drowning in Cuaron’s masterful “Roma” (discussed in Chapter 6). Cuaron’s camera seems to embody Cleo and her loving presence in the family just as the camera in “The Cranes Are Flying” seems to embody Veronica. The cinematographer for “The Cranes Are Flying,” Sergei Urusevsky, coined the phrase “off-duty camera” to describe the freedom made possible by using a hand-held camera removed from its tripod. Urusevsky conveys a whole philosophy of film when he says, “The camera can express what the actor is unable to portray: his inner sensations. The cameraman must act with the actors.”
The Criterion essay “The Cranes Are Flying: A Free Camera” by Chris Fujiwara discusses Veronica’s extraordinary screen presence as played by Tatiana Samoilova:
“Samoilova is striking not just for her beauty but for her unselfconscious, almost awkward expressiveness, so poignant in the close shots of her in the first minutes of the film, note the calmness of the tiny gesture with which she beckons Boris toward her. Veronica is in motion throughout much of the movie, and Samoilova’s face makes her flight luminous. If the film keeps the audience interested in Veronica, this is not just because Samoilova is so vivid and so good but also because Boris responds to her with an alert appreciation that never lapses into condescension. We understand his need for closeness to her. The time the two share on-screen is limited, but their moments together are so intensely acted and observed that they seem to go on much longer. Kalatozov heightens this effect by placing the lovers’ early-morning idyll in the empty streets of Moscow as a self-contained prologue before the main titles, as if the couple’s relationship existed in a state of timelessness. The director films Boris and Veronica from alternating high and low camera angles, so that the city and the sky, communicating directly, seem to promise unlimited freedom.”
Mikhail Kalatozov’s sublime “The Cranes Are Flying” was universally praised by the film professionals who attended the film’s pre-release screening. The esteemed director Mikhail Romm confessed that he had sat through the entire movie in tears. It was nice to learn that I was not alone in that regard! The film concludes with a grand celebration in Moscow for the returning heroes. Veronica is restored as the embodiment of hope as she distributes the flowers she had intended for Boris to the crowd.