Letyat zhuravli (1957)

Director:

Mikhail Kalatozov

Writers:

Viktor Rozov (play)
Viktor Rozov (screenplay)

Release Date:

21 March 1960 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Romance | War

Plot:

Veronica plans a rendezvous with her lover, Boris, at the bank of river, only for him to be drafted into World War II shortly thereafter.

Plot Keywords:

Cousin | Dead Soldier | Soldiers Home | Dream Sequence | Munitions Factory

Awards:

Nominated for 2 BAFTA Film Awards. Another 3 wins

Cast

Tatyana Samojlova	...	Veronika (as T. Samojlova)
Aleksey Batalov	...	Boris
Vasili Merkuryev	...	Fyodor Ivanovich (as V. Merkuryev)
Aleksandr Shvorin	...	Mark (as A. Shvorin)
Svetlana Kharitonova	...	Irina (as S. Kharitonova)
Konstantin Nikitin	...	Volodya (as K. Nikitin)
Valentin Zubkov	...	Stepan (as V. Zubkov)
Antonina Bogdanova	...	Grandmother (as A. Bogdanova)
Boris Kokovkin	...	Tyernov (as B. Kokovkin)
Yekaterina Kupriyanova	...	Anna Mikhajlovna (as Ye. Kupriyanova)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Valentina Ananyina
O. Dzisko
Klarina Frolova		(as K. Frolova)
Leonid Knyazev		(as L. Knyazev)
Yu. Kulikov
Pyotr Merkuryev
Daniil Netrebin
Aleksandr Popov		(as Sasha Popov)
I. Preis
T. Shamshurin
Nikolai Smorchkov		(as N. Smorchkov)
Galina Stepanova
Adrián Viador	...	Mark (voice)
Valentina Vladimirova

Also Known As:

Летят журавли (Soviet Union: Russian title)
Miprinaven tseroebi (Soviet Union: Georgian title)
The Cranes Are Flying (USA)

Runtime:

Argentina:97 min | Germany:95 min | Russia:97 min | Sweden:94 min | USA:94 min

Country:

Soviet Union

Language:

Russian

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Singapore:PG | Sweden:15 | USA:TV-PG | Argentina:16 | Finland:K-16 | West Germany:12 (bw)

Company:

Mosfilm

Trivia:

With the death of Stalin in 1953, the "cult of personality" that had infused all Soviet cinema during his rule began to relax. During the Stalinist regime, every war film had to celebrate both Lenin and Stalin and how they led the USSR to victory. "The Cranes are Flying" caused quite a stir upon its release as it deviated from that ruling.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Chacun son cinéma ou Ce petit coup au coeur quand la lumière s'éteint et que le film commence (2007)

Visually inventive by any standards; inventive narrative by Soviet standards

The story told by The Cranes are Flying is not, admittedly, all that original. Young lovers are separated by war; bad things happen to both. We've seen it many times before.

Nonetheless, we haven't seen it filmed this well, with bold shots that take liberties to emphasize separation, or destruction, or hopelessness. All the more remarkable coming from the Soviet Union, and reason to conclude that Tarkovsky is not the last word in modern-era Soviet cinema.

I was reading Chekhov's "Three Sisters" the other day, and chanced upon what may be the meaning of the title of this film. In Act 2, Masha objects to the notion that we must live our lives without meaning or understanding:

"MASHA: Surely mankind must believe in something, or at least seek for the truth, otherwise life is just emptiness, emptiness. To live and not to know why the cranes are flying, why children are born, why there are stars in the sky. Either you must know why it is you live, or everything is trivial - mere pointless nonsense."

Likewise, Veronika has a hard time believing that the war, and her and others' sufferings, have been pointless. Better to assign a meaning, to live as if one's life is significant, and not to give in to despair. It is perhaps this thinking that prompts her to her final act in the film.

BTW as a minor correction to one other comment here--there may be a pattern of V's in the film, though I hadn't noticed them myself. But the first letter of Veronika's name is not a further instance of this; in the Cyrillic alphabet, her name begins with a letter which looks like an English "B".