The Cranes Are Flying (Member Choice Classic)

Made the year after Khrushchev’s ‘Secret Speech’ denouncing the excesses of the Stalin era, Kalatozov’s bleak but brilliant WW2 drama – clearly an inspiration for both Tarkovsky’s debut Ivan’s Childhood (1962) and Klimov’s later Come and See (1985) – benefitted from casting off the yoke of state-mandated ‘heroic’ depictions of the ‘Great Patriotic War’: it remains the only Soviet film to have won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Powerfully visualised and compellingly acted (especially by Samoylova as the vilified heroine Veronika), this remains one of the high points of Russian cinema and undoubtedly the greatest Soviet film of the 1950s

96% – Rotten Tomatoes

8.3 / 10 – IMDB

“Kalatozov has a strong team behind him, particularly Sergey Urusevsky (who is unquestionably one of the greatest cinematographers of all time) who is exemplary with his wide shots and even better with his extreme close ups. There are camera tricks and ideas here that just puzzle me, not just because I cannot fathom how they were pulled off sixty five years ago but also because I don’t get how there weren’t numerous filmmakers trying to bite this film’s style. “