Movies News
Update · Mikhail Kalatozov’sTHE CRANES ARE FLYING
12:30 2:25 4:20 5:15 7:10 9:05
Friday, July 12 – Thursday, July 18
ONE WEEK
FROM THE DIRECTOR OF I AM CUBA
WINNER, PALME D’OR, CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 1957
(1957) Tatyana Samoylova and Alexei Batalov gambol by means of the empty, silent Moscow streets at Four am on the whitest of white nights – June 22, 1941 (Russian equal of December 7 or 9/11) – and with battle comes separation, dying, rape, desertion, draft-dodging, black-marketeering, and so on. – matters as soon as taboo within the Stalin years. Kalatozov and cinematographer photographer Sergei Urusevsky (the identical crew would make I Am Cuba seven years later) use strategies additionally as soon as taboo: a digital camera tour de pressure of helicopter and crane photographs, large crowd scenes, and infinite, usually hand-held photographs (one begins on a bus, follows Samoylova down the road, up a number of flights, and into her residence to search out… ) First post-war Soviet movie to search out broad business success within the U.S. and high prize winner at Cannes. DCP restoration. Approx. 95 min.
A presentation by Mosfilm Cinema Concern. A digital restoration picture by picture of the image and sound utilizing a 2K scanner.
A JANUS FILMS RELEASE
Reviews
“Kalatozov’s freewheeling camerawork, with its almost unhinged movements and impossibly wide-angle lenses, creates an almost dreamlike atmosphere. It’s as if the very screen itself were at the mercy of the characters’ feelings — swaying and shaking with each shout, each heaved breath, each impassioned lunge.”
– Bilge Ebiri, The Village Voice
“Rocked Soviet cinema and changed the West’s view of the Soviet Union. Here was a film with real, flawed people, that discussed petty corruption, cowardice and betrayal, and had virtuoso camerawork way beyond anything seen in the West.”
– John Riley, The Independent
“The first film of the Soviet “thaw,” Cranes has flights of Vigo-like lyricism, sequences of delicate romanticism, and startling visible ostentation. Its pictures usually hark again to the expressionism of Soviet silent cinema; director Kalatozov and cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky are masters of convulsive bravaura.”
– Cinematheque Ontario
“The first indisputable masterpiece of post-Stalin cinema.”
– Josephine Woll