65 years The Cranes are Flying
On October 12, 1957, Mikhail Kalatozov's film "The Cranes are Flying" was released on the screens of Soviet cinemas. The script for the film based on his own play "Forever Alive" was written by Viktor Rozov.
Victor Rozov, born in 1913, at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War worked in the Moscow Theater of the Revolution, now the Mayakovsky Theater. In July 1941 he went to the front as part of the militia. In October of the same year, in the very first battle near Vyazma, he was seriously injured. He spent several months in hospitals, until he was discharged in July 1942, already being an invalid. In 1943, he wrote the play "The Serebrisky Family", which, out of old friendship, was staged at the Kostroma Theater (in the late 20s and early 30s, Viktor Rozov played in this theater, as they said then, on a voluntary basis, that is, free of charge, from one love of art). However, the performance was soon removed from the stage, since the play was not approved by the censors.
Viktor Rozov put his play in the back drawer of his desk until better times. Better times came only after Stalin's death. Then Rozov revised his first play, and from it, already called "Forever Alive", in 1956, when it seemed that the country began to get rid of Stalinism, the biography of the legendary Sovremennik Theater began. At the same time, the famous film director, winner of the Stalin Prize, but even more famous as one of the leaders of Soviet cinema under Stalin, Mikhail Kalatozov (Kalatozishvili) decided to make a film based on this play.
It should be noted that Kalatozov was not just one of the leaders of Soviet cinema under Stalin, but headed one of its most important areas: the propaganda and promotion of Soviet cinema abroad. Also in the orbit of his professional duties included contacts with foreign filmmakers, the purchase of foreign films for the Soviet film distribution. It is possible that if someone else, less close to the leading circles of Soviet cinema, had thought about creating a film based on the play by Viktor Rozov, this idea would have remained unrealized.
The film was said to have been released in October 1957 and in its first year attracted 28.3 million viewers in theaters, or more than 14% of the country's population. Many moviegoers accustomed to propaganda experienced something like a painful shock while watching the film. For, perhaps for the first time, the death of the protagonist was shown. And certainly for the first time such topics as draft evasion, drug speculation and the "black market" in wartime were raised.
Thanks to the connections of Mikhail Kalatozov, the film "The Cranes are Flying" was shown in Rome and Milan in November 1957 as part of the Weeks of Soviet Cinema, and a little later in France. In May 1958, the picture was presented at the Cannes International Film Festival, where it made a splash. The film was awarded the Palme d'Or and Tatyana Samoilova was awarded a Special Mention.
How the Soviet authorities reacted to this first and, as it turned out later, the last triumph of Soviet cinema in Cannes, was described by Izvestia journalist Stanislav Sergeev: "A small unnamed note in Izvestia - "The first prize is for a Soviet film." This message was commented on with a couple of short phrases: "The movie "The Cranes are Flying" was shown on the second day of the festival. It made a deep impression on the public and journalists. The world press devoted hundreds of articles to it, in which were noted the merits of the picture. Tatiana Samoilova had a special success." The world press - yes. There are no reviews or photos in Izvestia. Neither the director of the film Mikhail Kalatozov, nor the screenwriter Viktor Rozov, nor the chief cameraman Sergey Urusevsky, whose names then became world-famous, are named in this note. At home, the film was initially received cautiously: the official puritan morality denied the main character of the film Veronika (Tatiana Samoilova) the right not even to love, but to the memory of love for the groom who died at the front."
Meanwhile, the film continued its triumphant march across the screens of all countries and continents. In 1959, Mikhail Kalatozov's The Cranes Are Flying received a nomination from the British Film Academy in the Best Film from Any Source category. But the British film academies, as usual, awarded their BAFTA award in this category to Jack Clayton's British film "Room at the Top", although this picture has already won the award as the best British film. However, the picture by Mikhail Kalatozov "The Cranes Are Flying" turned out to be in more than worthy company: "Nights of Cabiria" by Federico Fellini, "Cat on a Hot Roof" by Richard Brooks, "Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries)" by Ingmar Bergman, "The Unvanquished" by Satyajit Ray, "The Defiant Ones" by Stanley Kramer and others.
Wherever Mikhail Kalatozov's film "The Cranes are Flying" was shown, it was a huge success both among ordinary moviegoers and professional film critics. Even the captious and bilious film reviewer of The New York Times, Bosley Crowther, devoted a very laudatory review to the film (without failing, however, to note the illogicality, in his opinion, of the marriage between Veronica and Mark), in which he named two, in his opinion, the main features of the film. "These are a downright obsessive and overpowering revulsion to war and, in contrast, a beautifully tender, almost lyric, feeling for romantic love.These two amazing expressions, so uncommon in Soviet films, which are more often given to extolling patriotic fervor and the lovable qualities of hydroelectric plants, are the particular thematic distinctions of this extra ordinary prize-winning film, offered here under the cultural exchange agreement promoted by the Soviet Union and our Department of State.But most genuine and touching is the emphasis on the steadfast love and devotion of the heroine for her sweetheart—and his for her, as caught in quick scenes at the front.Thanks to Mr. Kalatozov's direction and the excellent performance Tatyana Samoilova gives as the girl, one absorbs a tremendous feeling of sympathy from this film—a feeling that has no awareness of geographical or political bounds."
Unlike Soviet film critics - contemporaries of the film, who passed over the film in silence, even despite its triumph outside the USSR (or perhaps precisely because of this triumph), Russian film critics paid tribute to the creation of Kalatozov-Rozov-Urusevsky. One of the most respected Russian film critics - Sergey Kudryavtsev - gave the film 10 points out of 10 possible and wrote in his review that this is "an amazing work that really radically changes ideas about the possibilities and expressive means of cinema, and at the same time has an unforgettable impact on our human emotions, allowing us to experience both aesthetic and spiritual catharsis."
Another well-known Russian film critic, Yevgeny Nefyodov, who also rated the film with a maximum of 10 points, in addition to listing the film’s undeniable merits, noted in his review: “I would like to believe that "The Cranes are Flying" helped people in the West to better understand the price paid by their allies in the anti-Hitler coalition, without the decisive contribution of which, perhaps, there would not have been a great Victory."
Despite the fact that many decades have passed since the release of the film "The Cranes are Flying", modern moviegoers around the world rate the film very highly. 77% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated the film from 8 to 10. And 33% of users - every third (!) - rated the film with the highest score - "ten". With that said, Mikhail Kalatozov's "The Cranes are Flying" was rated 9,093 by FilmGourmand, making it 142nd in the Golden Thousand.
