146 The Cranes Are Flying

Discuss releases by Criterion and the films on them. Threads may contain spoilers!
Post Reply
Message
Author
Martha
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 8:53 pm
Location: all up in thurr

146 The Cranes Are Flying

#1 Post by Martha » Sat Feb 12, 2005 8:32 pm

The Cranes Are Flying

Image

This landmark film by the virtuosic Mikhail Kalatozov was heralded as a revelation in the post-Stalin Soviet Union and the international cinema community alike. It tells the story of Veronica and Boris, a couple who are blissfully in love until the eruption of World War II tears them apart. With Boris at the front, Veronica must try to ward off spiritual numbness and defend herself from the increasingly forceful advances of her beau's draft-dodging cousin. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, The Cranes Are Flying is a superbly crafted drama with impassioned performances and viscerally emotional, gravity-defying cinematography by Kalatozov's regular collaborator Sergei Urusevsky.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interview with scholar Ian Christie on why the film is a landmark of Soviet cinema
• Audio interview from 1961 with director Mikhail Kalatozov
Hurricane Kalatozov, a documentary from 2009 on the Georgian director's complex relationship with the Soviet government
• Segment from a 2008 program about the film's cinematography, featuring original storyboards and an interview with actor Alexei Batalov
• Interview from 2001 with filmmaker Claude Lelouch on the film's French premiere at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by critic Chris Fujiwara

Criterionforum.org user rating averages

Feature currently disabled

User avatar
zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

#2 Post by zedz » Sat Apr 02, 2005 10:21 pm

I agree with you about the formal wonders of this film. If you're interested in seeing dazzling form outbalance content to a far, far greater extent, you should track down Kalatozov and Urusevsky's I Am Cuba.

You may be right about Jeunet, as well. I'm sure that the amazing, kinetic sequence of Veronica running alongside the train was the source of a similarly shaky sequence in Carax's Les Amants du Pont Neuf, and P.T. Anderson quotes Cuba's famous swimming pool shot in Boogie Nights.

User avatar
Michael Kerpan
Spelling Bee Champeen
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 1:20 pm
Location: New England
Contact:

#3 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sat Apr 02, 2005 11:45 pm

The running along with the train and pushing through crowds shots were all anticipated in Kinoshita's 1944 "Rikugun" (Army), a mind-boggling "propaganda" film that struck me as shockingly anti-war in outlook -- considering the time and place it was made.

The wonderful score here was written by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, one of Shostakovich's most inspired contemporaries (and one of his closest musical friends). More about Weinberg here.

User avatar
jbeall
Joined: Sat Aug 12, 2006 9:22 am
Location: Atlanta-ish

#4 Post by jbeall » Sat Apr 05, 2008 12:23 pm

I'm rather shocked to see only three posts re: Cranes. I was blown away by this film, which is simply stunning.

A friend pointed out how it uses elements of neorealism, expressionism, and of course montage, and the interesting thing is that it doesn't look like an experimental mish-mash of all these styles, but integrates them all into the narrative very effectively.

The plot is fairly propagandistic, although it's quite a bit more nuanced than most of the communist kitsch that came out of the USSR in the 50s. However, the film also undermines its communist imperatives by inserting crosses all over the place (esp. the expressionist scenes). And there are just some freakin' beautiful shots, like the camera following Boris as he runs up the spiral staircase, or the long tracking shot as Boris and his fellow soldier on their reconnaissance mission in the swamp.

I'd been putting off watching Soy Cuba until I'd seen this, and now I can't wait. Still, the lack of discussing re: Cranes Are Flying is a bit puzzling--this has to be one of the more hidden gems in the criterion collection.

User avatar
Michael Kerpan
Spelling Bee Champeen
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 1:20 pm
Location: New England
Contact:

#5 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sat Apr 05, 2008 12:31 pm

I think this was discussed a good bit on the old board -- but all the good discussion got lost. ;~}

So it is up to you new discoverers to spark further discussion.

User avatar
HerrSchreck
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2005 11:46 am

#6 Post by HerrSchreck » Sat Apr 05, 2008 4:39 pm

I know I've talked about this film a kajillion times, I'm actually shocked to discover none of it was here. I actually prefer this film to Soy Cuba, which sometimes strikes me as great cinematography in search of a film. Sometimes.

But this film is the perfectomundo blending of hi-art ambitions and crowd pleasing melodrama. The team of Urusevsy & Khalatosov have never been bettered, really-- matched yes .. by Murnau/Freund, Lang/Hoffman, and Mann/Alton. But never bettered.

User avatar
tryavna
Joined: Wed Mar 30, 2005 4:38 pm
Location: North Carolina

#7 Post by tryavna » Sun Apr 06, 2008 12:14 pm

HerrSchreck wrote:I know I've talked about this film a kajillion times, I'm actually shocked to discover none of it was here. I actually prefer this film to Soy Cuba
I do, too. There's something cold emotionally about Soy Cuba. It's visually stunning, but perhaps a bit too ideologically driven. Cranes, on the other hand, strikes me as being very deeply felt by everyone involved. In fact, the propagandistic elements that jbeall is talking about don't really register all that much for me.

User avatar
Michael Kerpan
Spelling Bee Champeen
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 1:20 pm
Location: New England
Contact:

#8 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sun Apr 06, 2008 2:07 pm

I think most of the content in Cranes is pretty universal. I see very little that is propagandistic in any narrow sense of the term.

User avatar
HerrSchreck
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2005 11:46 am

#9 Post by HerrSchreck » Sun Apr 06, 2008 8:35 pm

That perplexed me too about jbeall's post.. in fact Cranes was saluted as heralding a wave of ventilated the propagandistic knee jerk in Soviet cinema, and mocked ww2 prop in many scenes, especially making fun of the workers "quota pleadges" ect. On that front alone it holds up very well as the sortve "opening of the door" to mass honesty in art.

User avatar
miless
Joined: Sat Apr 01, 2006 9:45 pm

#10 Post by miless » Sun Apr 06, 2008 8:51 pm

HerrSchreck wrote:That perplexed me too about jbeall's post.. in fact Cranes was saluted as heralding a wave of ventilated the propagandistic knee jerk in Soviet cinema, and mocked ww2 prop in many scenes, especially making fun of the workers "quota pleadges" ect. On that front alone it holds up very well as the sortve "opening of the door" to mass honesty in art.
I totally agree, especially when compared with Ballad of a Soldier, Cranes seems free of almost any government imposition (Ballad still feels very much like propaganda).

User avatar
jbeall
Joined: Sat Aug 12, 2006 9:22 am
Location: Atlanta-ish

#11 Post by jbeall » Sun Apr 06, 2008 9:49 pm

D'oh!!! I completely forgot about the "quotas" scene when I posted (surprising, given how funny I thought it was at the time!). I want/need to watch it again soon; there's undoubtedly other stuff I just didn't get upon first viewing. Thinking about it a couple of days later, I actually can't recall any "propagandistic" scenes that didn't contain at least a touch of irony, so I'll simply (and sheepishly) retract my earlier comment.

Re: Schreck and tryavna's thoughts on Soy Cuba. To what degree do you think the film's shortcomings might have been affected by Kalasatov's ambition to create Cuba's national epic? Or perhaps Cuba, in the wake of Castro's revolution, was a little more conservative culturally than the USSR during the years immediately following Stalin's death?

User avatar
HerrSchreck
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2005 11:46 am

#12 Post by HerrSchreck » Mon Apr 07, 2008 1:00 am

I just think the film is a series of semi-interesting vignettes shot with breathtaking vision and dexterity that half the time exceeds their value. The quasi-omnibus nature of the film curiously doesn't seem to work well. Gloriously photographed "national epics" were never a problem in the soviet era, and perhaps if a straight epic narrative, no matter how fragmented stylistically, was tried for, (say along the lines of Pudovkins Petersberg, or Dovzhenko's Arsenal, or various Eisenstiens) it might have worked. I simply find myself caring very little for the various individuals thrown up there on the screen and I think it has to do with the mechanics of the storytelling and the distance between the viewer and the cjaracters (and the briefness of their appearance)... it's like Michaelangelo gloriously sculpting some anonymous little douchebag you can't figure out who the fuck he is or why so much effort went into him.

But I'm not sure. I just know I watch it for the shots and the wonderful lenses. Proof that Khalatozov knew how to craft a sturdy avant garde, coherent national epic that maintains your involvement... track down the extremely hard to see Salt For Svanetia.

User avatar
bunuelian
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 11:49 am
Location: San Diego

#13 Post by bunuelian » Mon Apr 07, 2008 2:51 am

Well, I'm not sure Michaelangelo could carve "some douchebag" and someone come to the conclusion that the result was the mediocre work of a hack. It's a fairly useless analogy to film. The douchebag doesn't matter anymore, does he? The douchebag who stood for Michaelangelo's David probably got syphilis and died somewhat overweight.

But you're right, this film has certain limits. It's not an astonishing masterpiece of free thinking artistry that transcends its time in every way possible. It doesn't contain frame after frame of "fuck you gimme freedom!" that Americans are so programmed to demand when they evaluate Soviet cinema, especially the kind that they aren't told beforehand to appreciate as art and not as government property.

It's very difficult, if not impossible, for non-Russians to appreciate the Russian World War II experience. Evaluating Russian films about World War II as "propaganda" immediately strikes me as habitual reactionary bullshit. For example, too many reviews of "Come and See" reduce the ending to "propaganda" because it glorifies the intense, literal human sacrifice made by Russian civilians to repulse the German invasion. Millions of Russians died during this war, and it's profoundly ignorant for critics to fall back on Cold War rhetoric to analyze the Russian cinematic response to this trauma as "propaganda" because it beatifies the intense suffering of those who had to live through that time. It's very important to distinguish between honoring those who have suffered and buying into the manipulation of that suffering by the power-hungry bastards who follow.

But more emphatically I'd like to argue that it's important to not begin with a discussion of Soviet-era films with a proviso of "propaganda or not?" And more significantly, are those saying, "this is propaganda!" as certain as they pretend that the filmmakers themselves weren't convinced of the ideals that their films advance? Maybe these are ideals with some merit? (And if so, what ideals, exactly?)

This film is an absolutely essential experience for those interested in Russian film. It's a technical masterpiece, but that's a pathetically narrow place to end the appreciation of this film. It's simply great.

User avatar
HerrSchreck
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2005 11:46 am

#14 Post by HerrSchreck » Mon Apr 07, 2008 3:15 am

bunuelian wrote:Well, I'm not sure Michaelangelo could carve "some douchebag" and someone come to the conclusion that the result was the mediocre work of a hack. It's a fairly useless analogy to film. The douchebag doesn't matter anymore, does he? The douchebag who stood for Michaelangelo's David probably got syphilis and died somewhat overweight..
Boy you must have a flattop crewcut if that (fairly flippantly delivered) analogy went over your head because it was also deliberately sharp for clarity. (Notwithstanding I never said Soy Cuba was the work of a hack!!!???)

Form over content. The analogy is quite relevant not only for film but any art.

Form is not content no matter how wonderful the form or the means. In film painting literature or sculpture. Perhaps you're such a Michaelangeloni that you get your socks rocked to the box by every single thing the man did. I've been yawned to high heaven by plenty of ho hum uncelebrated-- tucked away-- works by any number of masters. Some Michaelang's, DiVinci's, Van Gogh, Rembrants, et al... despite the honed chops-for-the-ages not everyone is fully inspired 100% of the time.

As to the rest of the post, I take it you're talking about Cranes? Because you took what I said about Soy Cuba's camerawork vs ho hum content, then pivoted with
But you're right, this film ...

about what sounded like Cranes.

Re Cranes: as a lad who's mentioned quite a number of times that the Russians are the individuals most responsible for the destruction of the german war machine.. and that self-congratulatory squeaking in proud tones how "our American farmboys & lanky british lad simply singlehandedly saved the world" viz D-Day is horseshit compared to the enormous Soviet sacrifice--

I think you're way carried away from yourself. This film was as much celebrated by Russians for its lack of propaganda, for it's relaxation of certain obligatory hoorahs.. Any government regime which imposes political, party-apparatus-based limits on filmmaking has a right to be examined in this light, at least occasionally. The same way americans examine the repercussions of their own Huac experience, the dreadful repercussions of the code, the crushing disaster of Goebbels & Hitler squeezing out of Germany not only the most vital film movement on earth but the equivalent in art, writing, music, etc, people are going to conversely regard it as a Good Thing when controls are relazed, and spigots are opened a bit.

I dunno if you're a Russophile, or what, but the fact is you're singling out as a kind of bullshit exclusive lashing of Soviet film-- which is something what goes on during periods of censorship in any government in any part of the world. From per/to-postwar Japanese, Pre to post war German, preto postwar Chinese, American etc. Folks have a natural distaste for being propagandized. This isn't huac anymore-- it's study based and quite normal.

User avatar
tryavna
Joined: Wed Mar 30, 2005 4:38 pm
Location: North Carolina

#15 Post by tryavna » Mon Apr 07, 2008 1:01 pm

jbeall: Yes, I think that part of the problem with Soy Cuba is its goal of creating a "national epic." It's episodic nature is designed to do precisely that: hit all the various aspects of what's wrong and what's right about Cuba before the revolution (the decadence catering to greedy and lustful American businessmen, the noble farmer, the fiery young student who sacrifices his life for the cause/nation, etc.). It's all just a little too schematic for my tastes, which is of course why I refer to it as being too ideologically driven. But that's merely the content. As I said before, the movie is beautiful to look at, and I've enjoyed watching it several times. It's just that, for me, the narrative and the visual style just don't dovetail in a particularly pleasing way. Cranes does, though.
bunuelian wrote:Evaluating Russian films about World War II as "propaganda" immediately strikes me as habitual reactionary bullshit. For example, too many reviews of "Come and See" reduce the ending to "propaganda" because it glorifies the intense, literal human sacrifice made by Russian civilians to repulse the German invasion. Millions of Russians died during this war, and it's profoundly ignorant for critics to fall back on Cold War rhetoric to analyze the Russian cinematic response to this trauma as "propaganda" because it beatifies the intense suffering of those who had to live through that time.
bunuelian: I agree entirely with the thrust of your argument here. I find it very frustrating when American critics try to "read" propaganda "into" an otherwise non-propagandistic Soviet movie. I sometimes wonder whether or not that's just a way of covering one's ass from stupid readers who would otherwise be inclined to say: "Well, if you like it so much, why don't you move to Russia?" Just to name one example, that's the sense I got from DVD Savant's recent review of the East German I Was Nineteen (a truly wonderful movie, by the way). There's nothing any more propagandistic about it than about Cranes, but Savant seemed to feel obligated to point out that the movie portrays the Soviet army in a good light. Well, of course, they're the protagonists, and they were fighting the Nazis! So it's just a silly point to make -- and I suspect it's a sop to readers who still think of the Soviets only as the "Evil Empire."

User avatar
Tootletron
Joined: Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:01 pm

#16 Post by Tootletron » Sun Oct 26, 2008 11:00 pm

I just wanna say that the chick in Cranes was massively cute.
Last edited by Tootletron on Mon Oct 27, 2008 12:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
carax09
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 2:22 am
Location: This almost empty gin palace

#17 Post by carax09 » Mon Oct 27, 2008 12:29 am

I agree. To their credit, Criterion would certainly have included some contextualizing material for this important film, if it was a current release.

(edit---this responds to post below)
Last edited by carax09 on Mon Oct 27, 2008 6:38 am, edited 2 times in total.

User avatar
Tootletron
Joined: Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:01 pm

#18 Post by Tootletron » Mon Oct 27, 2008 12:59 am

Why does an excellent film like this have absolutely zero in the way of bonus content? No special features, no interviews or anything like that - not even any essays. I'm really surprised by the lack of essays.
carax09 wrote:I think you may have accidentally watched Winged Migration.
yeah, words like "in" can be pretty important

edit: Although it doesn't have any special features, it apparently does have an essay that the old Criterion website didn't list.

User avatar
dad1153
Joined: Thu Apr 16, 2009 10:32 am
Location: New York, NY

Re: 146 The Cranes are Flying

#19 Post by dad1153 » Tue Oct 13, 2009 2:10 am

Caught "The Cranes Are Flying" on TCM-HD over the weeknd. I loved "Ballad of a Soldier" when I saw it a few months back but "Cranes Are Flying" is even better. The camera work in this movie is just a thing of beauty, so full of energy and able to be both intimate (the close-ups of beautiful Tatyana Samojlova, or anyone lucky enough to be placed on the foreground) and sweepingly epic within the same 1:33:1 frame. I couldn't help but rewind several scenes just to admire the beauty of the compositions: Boris' 'dream' wedding on the apartment building's stairs, Veronika's mad dash after the train and her bombed-out apartment, the train station finale... just virtuoso camera work left and right that doesn't date the movie at all like a product of the 1950's. Vasili Merkuryev has a face and rotund body made for silent movies that helps his Fyodor Ivanovich character connect on-screen as a man of principle that would keep the girlfriend of his drafted son living under his roof. And even though it takes a backseat to the Vero-Boris-Mark love triangle the portrayal of wartime Russia (Stalin would have disapproved!) shows the type of sweeping motion picture spectacle that the Soviet Union machinery could deliver when it put its national film industry behind it. The only weakness (and it's more of a nitpick) is that the movie's title is inspired by the movie's only dated element: those badly-animated birds flying in formation (tsk, tsk, tsk). Masterpiece otherwise.
Last edited by dad1153 on Tue Oct 13, 2009 2:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
HypnoHelioStaticStasis
Joined: Tue Feb 26, 2008 12:21 pm
Location: New York

Re: 146 The Cranes are Flying

#20 Post by HypnoHelioStaticStasis » Tue Oct 13, 2009 2:22 am

Word to the wise, Ballad of a Soldier was directed by Grigori Chukhrai.

And yes, this is a wonderful film.

EDIT: Ah I see you edited your post without saying "thank you"... :wink:
Last edited by HypnoHelioStaticStasis on Tue Oct 13, 2009 1:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

mteller
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:23 pm

Re: 146 The Cranes are Flying

#21 Post by mteller » Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:43 pm

I wish they'd release The Letter Never Sent, another absolutely fantastic Kalatozov/Urusevsky collaboration.

User avatar
Michael Kerpan
Spelling Bee Champeen
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 1:20 pm
Location: New England
Contact:

Re: 146 The Cranes are Flying

#22 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:49 pm

mteller wrote:I wish they'd release The Letter Never Sent, another absolutely fantastic Kalatozov/Urusevsky collaboration.
Seconded.

User avatar
HerrSchreck
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2005 11:46 am

Re: 146 The Cranes are Flying

#23 Post by HerrSchreck » Tue Oct 13, 2009 2:21 pm

Thirded. Some of the most breathtaking outdoor photography you'll ever see. The forest fire sequence is just absolutely, fingernails-in-palms, breathtaking. I've got a decent, well-fansubbed, DVD to hold me in any case.

User avatar
dad1153
Joined: Thu Apr 16, 2009 10:32 am
Location: New York, NY

Re: 146 The Cranes are Flying

#24 Post by dad1153 » Tue Oct 13, 2009 2:49 pm

HypnoHelioStaticStasis wrote:Word to the wise, Ballad of a Soldier was directed by Grigori Chukhrai.
And yes, this is a wonderful film.
EDIT: Ah I see you edited your post without saying "thank you"... :wink:
BUSTED!!! :-" And thank you! :?

User avatar
puxzkkx
Joined: Fri Jul 17, 2009 12:33 am

Re: 146 The Cranes are Flying

#25 Post by puxzkkx » Wed Oct 14, 2009 4:06 am

I must admit that I was floored by the two major tracking shots in the film - the one where Samojlova's character runs up and down the train platform as the soldiers are shipped off to war, and the one where she does the same as they return. With every face there's a story. How powerful are those two shots?!

Post Reply