Mihail Kalatozov's The Cranes are Flying is a film about young love torn apart by World War II. As a result, two themes work on the audience: there is both the love of two young people and the love of one's country. In terms of plot, there is not a lot to say. Nothing all that clever presents itself. Nonetheless, the film's strong sense of pathos, execution in acting, and off-the-charts direction and cinematography produce nothing less than sheer delight.
To be sure, the delight is derived less from plot twists and themes than style. In the case of plot, "tragedy" sums it up. Furthermore, the viewer is always in a position to say what will happen next. As for the themes, both are well worn and essentially mundane. The romance is tolerable, but the patriotism is downright detracting to all but the choir.
And yet. Despite the simplistic plot, one cannot fail to sympathetically latch onto young Veronica (Tatyana Samojlova), the naive, but goodhearted Boris (Aleksey Batalov), or Boris' father, Fyodor Ivanovich (Vasili Merkuryev), who is merely the voice of reason. In terms of conflict, one cannot fail to despise Fyodor's nephew, Mark (Aleksandr Shvorin) from the moment he appears. After all, Mark first appears in a scene tying to sway Veronica from Boris to himself, clearly as a matter of esteeming his own lust over the Veronica and Boris' giddy, mutual love.
Beyond the film's sentimental education, Samojlova and Merkuryev anchor the the story in the two respective themes. Samojlova's part constantly finds the right expression or gesture in order to convey either vivaciousness in Boris' presence, or emptiness in his absence. The strength in either case amounts to the look of one who cannot keep their feelings from surfacing. Merkuryev's part is also marvelously played out as the counterpoint to Samojlova. He is austere and demands control of himself throughout. He does not even bat an eyelash when his mother says, "You needn't pretend," as he sees Boris off to war.
While the interplay between Veronica and Fyodor are well developed, Boris could have been written into the script with a fuller sense of substance rather than a casualty of two themes. By portraying Boris as naive in lieu of a sense of struggle, or the mere struggle to struggle, material difference is lost to the interaction between Veronica and Fyodor. (Note: Kalatozov makes up for this in Soy Cuba, a joint effort between Mosfilm and the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry.)
The direction salvages an otherwise pitiful, though still possibly well-acted film, from the junk bin of films that never get reproduced in a new medium. Examples of Kalatozov's artistry are readily seen in his use of silence. First, when Veronica pushes her way through the crowd at the rallying center, and screams "Boris" at the top of her lungs, the crowd can still be heard (though it does not seem loud) and she is silent. We simply read her lips. A second instance is when Veronica learns her parents have died in an air raid. Here, she sees a clock and hears it ticking. It grows gradually louder as she stares at it, almost in order to silence it through mere will. When she cannot, she covers her ears and the ticking stops. The last example of Kalatozov's "silencing effect" happens as Veronica rushes away from the hospital. Veronica's scream is swallowed up by a train that passes underneath the bridge she is standing on. Without as capable directing, the film would have been disastrous.
Lastly, the film is somewhere between cutting edge and ahead of its time in terms of cinematography. Sergei Urusevsky handles the camera with technical brilliance. The tracking shots of Veronica through the crowds rate with Kubrick's tracking shots in Paths of Glory, which came out the same year. The shots that run alongside Veronica when she runs from the hospital prefigure the race scene in Truffaut's Jules and Jim. The shots of Boris running up the stairs after Veronica and later as he dies, where we see trees swirling above, are also unforgettable. And though Urusevsky tops these shots with the opening scenes of Soy Cuba, this is an early version of a daring cinematographer.
IMDb rates this film 8.2 stars out of 10
Film 101 rates this film 4.5 stars out of 5
