war torn
by
Douglas Messerli
Viktor
Rozov (play & screenplay), Mikhail Kalatozov (director) Летят журавли
(Letyat
zhuravli) (The Cranes Are Flying) / 1957, US 1960
Perhaps I recall that scene simply
because it is the post poetical one of a movie that, soon after, almost falls
apart as it tells its Soviet realist-based tale of family life and the earnest
suffering of the Russians during World War II.
Certainly there are several quite moving
scenes, such as the moment when, returning from a subway after a German air
raid, Veronika finds her apartment blown up with no sign of her parents, who
have obviously been killed. And after moving in with Boris’ loving family,
Veronika, who has still to hear from her lover on the front, she is presumably
raped by Mark in a quite memorable cinematic moment.
When this film was shown in the US in
1960, it must have seemed, in its slightly more complicated characterizations, as
a breakthrough in Stalinist literary restrictions. The film won the Palme d’Or
at the Cannes Film Festival of 1958.
But watching The Cranes Are Flying the other day, I saw it as basically
fulfilling most of the Soviet demands for portraying the patriotic values of
everyday Soviet citizens. Both families sacrifice as hard as the soldiers to
help their country survive and, despite her forced marriage, Veronika remains
inwardly faithful to her soldier-lover, the real hero of the piece.
Mark, who sneaks out nights to play jazz
in a local whore house, becomes the obvious symbol of the derogation of Soviet
values by the West. And the cranes, bookmarking the beginning and end of this
film, become an even more apparent symbol of Soviet aspirations and their
correspondence with the natural world.
What redeems this film is its excellent acting
by Sammoilova, Batalov, Vasili Meerkryev (as Fydor Ivanovich) and Antonina
Bogdanova (as the Grandmother). And I was charmed, I must admit, by the
handsome Aleksandr Shvorin as Mark, playing, with a cigarette hanging from his
lips, a far more down-to-earth music than his supposedly “talented” paeans to
the Soviet ideals. Even as a deviant cad, Mark, at least, has none of the
smugness of some of the stock figures of this fairly predictable piece.
Los Angeles, July
3, 2017
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