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 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 warfare comes separation, loss of life, rape, desertion, draft-dodging, black-marketeering, and so forth. – subjects as soon as taboo within the Stalin years. Kalatozov and cinematographer photographer Sergei Urusevsky (the identical workforce would make I Am Cuba seven years later) use methods additionally as soon as taboo: a digicam tour de pressure of helicopter and crane pictures, big crowd scenes, and countless, typically hand-held pictures (one begins on a bus, follows Samoylova down the road, up a number of flights, and into her residence to seek out… ) First post-war Soviet movie to seek out broad business success within the U.S. and prime 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 photographs typically 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