Sergey Urusevsky’s dazzling camera work is a character unto itself in THE CRANES ARE FLYING
THE CRANES ARE FLYING (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1957)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Sunday, June 7, 6:15
Series runs through June 21
212-505-5181
anthologyfilmarchives.org
Even at a mere ninety-seven minutes, Mikhail Kalatozov’s The Cranes Are Flying is a sweeping Russian antiwar epic, an intimate and moving black-and-white tale of romance and betrayal during WWII. Veronika (Tatyana Samojlova) and Boris (Aleksey Batalov) are madly in love, swirling dizzyingly through the streets and up and down a winding staircase. But when Russia enters the war, Boris signs up and heads to the front, while Veronika is pursued by Boris’s cousin, Mark (Aleksandr Shvorin). Pining for word from Boris, Veronika works as a nurse at a hospital run by Boris’s father, Fyodor Ivanovich (Vasili Merkuryev), as the family, including Boris’s sister, Irina (Svetlana Kharitonova), looks askance at her relationship with Mark. The personal and political intrigue comes to a harrowing conclusion in a grand finale that for all its scale and scope gets to the very heart and soul of how the war affected the Soviet people on an individual, human level, in the family lives of women and children, lovers and cousins, husbands and wives.
Unforeseen circumstances trap Veronika (Tatyana Samojlova) in wartime Russia in Mikhail Kalatozov’s masterful THE CRANES ARE FLYING
The only Russian film to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes by itself, The Cranes Are Flying is a masterful work of art, a searing portrait of the horrors of war as seen through the eyes of one desperate woman. Adapting his own play, Viktor Rozov’s story sets up Boris and his family as a microcosm of Soviet society under Stalin; it’s no coincidence that the film was made only after the leader’s death. It’s a whirlwind piece of filmmaking, a marvelous collaboration between director Kalatozov, editor Mariya Timofeyeva (Ballad of a Soldier), composer Moisey Vaynberg (the opera The Passenger), and cinematographer Sergey Urusevsky, who also worked with Kalatozov on I Am Cuba and The Unsent Letter; Urusevsky’s camera, often handheld, is simply dazzling, whether moving through and above crowd scenes, closing in on Samojlova’s face and Batalov’s eyes, or twirling up at the sky. Poetic and lyrical, heartbreaking and maddening, The Cranes Are Flying is an exquisite example of the power of cinema. You can see it June 7 at 6:15 as part of the Anthology Film Archives series “This Is Celluloid: 35MM,” a three-week celebration of the way films were made and shown before the digital age; as the festival website explains, “As the medium of celluloid (or more accurately but far less evocatively, polyester) is rapidly pushed towards obsolescence, and the new digital standard, DCP, continues to invade not only the world’s multiplexes but also those repertory theaters and museums devoted to screening movies from the art form’s first century, Anthology stands fast in its commitment to keeping 35mm and 16mm and 8mm alive!” The festival continues through June 21 with such other works as John Boorman’s Excalibur, Monte Hellman’s Two Lane Blacktop, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia, Joseph Losey’s M, and Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumble Fish.
Three-time loser Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark) gets more than he bargained for when he lifts femme fatale Candy’s (Jean Peters) wallet on the subway, landing him in trouble with mysterious Joey (Richard Kiley) and the Feds in Samuel Fuller’s fab Cold War noir set in New York City. “If you refuse to cooperate, you’ll be as guilty as the traitors that gave Stalin the A bomb,” the cops tell him, to which Skip classically replies, “Are you waving the flag at me?” Widmark is almost too good as Skip, a suave pickpocket who lives under the Brooklyn Bridge in an old bait and tackle shack. Sure, it gets a little melodramatic at the end, which comes too soon (the film is only eighty minutes long), but it’s worth every minute nonetheless. And yes, that is Brooklyn’s own Thelma Ritter as the curious little lady who sells ties for information, earning her fourth consecutive Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. One of Fuller’s best, Pickup on South Street is screening at Film Forum in a new 4K restoration May 29 to June 4.
Josh and Benny Safdie’s Heaven Knows What is a harrowing tale about addiction and obsession, but it turns out that its back story is much more compelling than what shows up onscreen. Josh was researching a film about the Diamond District when he came upon Arielle Holmes, a nineteen-year-old temp assistant. He was determined to find out more about her and shortly discovered that she was a homeless junkie with a wild, unpredictable druggie boyfriend, Ilya. Josh and Benny, who had previous collaborated on such indie features as The Pleasure of Being Robbed and Daddy Longlegs and the documentary Lenny Cooke, commissioned Holmes to write her story, and she quickly delivered 150 pages that ultimately inspired the film, in which Holmes plays Harley, a young heroin addict living on the streets of New York City, spanging money (begging for spare change) for her next fix while in a combative relationship with Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones). Harley has done something to alienate Ilya, and she says she will kill herself to prove her love and devotion. He tells her to go ahead and do it, so she slits one of her wrists and is rushed to the hospital. That sets the stage for the rest of the lurid and sordid narrative, as Haley bounces between the cruel Ilya and her drug dealer, the far more easygoing and mellow Mike (real-life street legend Buddy Duress in his acting debut); she is also followed around by Skully (rapper Necro), who wants to save her from herself but is clearly in no position to do so.
