The “Thaw” and CinemaThe Cranes Are

Flying

After the Victory: Politics and Arts

The victory of 1945: great expectations.

Suppression of the arts. Zhdanov’s resolution

against “individualistic” and “bourgeois”

writers (1946).

The “anti-formalist” campaign against

composers (1948).

The “struggle against cosmopolitanism” and the

“Doctors’ plot”.

Film industry stultified, bureaucratized. Few

films made.

The “Thaw” (1953-68) and its Consequences

Stalin dies in 1953; Khrushchev’s speechat the XXthParty Congress

(1956): denunciation of “the cult of personality”; Stalin’s embalmed corpse removed from the

Mausoleum (Lenin’s tomb); The city of Stalingrad named Volgograd; Peasants got passports; migration to cities; housing

construction: low-end apartment blocks, khruschevkas;

Post-secondary education boom; The country opens itself to the world: the 6th World

Festival of Youth and Students in 1957 (new music, style in arts, fashion; (almost) free exchange of information; the 60s generation emerges;

Scientific and technical achievements; the Sputnik and Gagarin’s flight

Khrushchev (right) and Gagarin, first human to make a cosmic flight

The “Thaw” and Cinema

The inflow of foreign films (trophy films, such as The Girl of my Dreams and Tarzan; French New Wave and Italian neorealism).

The number of films produced per year rises from under 10 in early 1950s to 75 in 1956;

Old masters achieve a new degree of freedom (i.e.,Abram Room, Mikhail Romm, GrigoriKozintsev);

Cinema studios in Soviet republics develop film production (both quantity and quality);

New breed of directors takes over (“generation of lieutenants” and younger);

Screen versions of Russian and international classics (i.e., Hamlet and King Lear by G.Kozintsev, The Lady with the Dog by IosifKheifits, etc.).

Hamlet (1964), King Lear (1970) by GrigoriKozintsev

The Lady with the Dog (1960)

The “Thaw” Cinema

Films pushing ideological boundaries (i.e., GrigoriChukhrai’sThe Forty-First, 1956: a human face of the “enemy,” love across ideological barrier).

Poetic films of young directors

De-monumentalized cinema; human dimension; De-dramatization (influence of neo-realism and

M.Antonioni); “Poetic cinema”: poetry of everyday life, youth,

joy of living. Poetic aspect is more important than the events.

MarlenKhutsiev’sSpring on Zarechnaia Street (1956) and I Am Twenty/Ilyich’s Gate (1961, released few years later) – the embodiment of the Thaw; intelligentia’s concept of “socialism with a human face.”

Reality as the primary object; quest for “cinematic truth”; everyday worries of young people; “New Wave” style.

I Am Twenty/Ilyich’s Gate (1961)

I Step Through Moscow Я шагаю по Москве(1963)

Director: Georgi Danelia

Starring: Nikita Mikhalkov

Music: Andrei Petrov

Poetry: Gennadii Shpalikov

I Step Through Moscow

Thriving Film Industry

New beginnings in cinema: funds, cinemas built, film

director (Ivan Pyriev) at head of industry.

New themes: personal lives. Influence of Italian and

French cinema. The war as one of recurrent themes.

1958 The Cranes Are Flying (Dir. Kalatozov, Mosfilm,

1957) wins Golden Palm (Palme d’Or) at Cannes.

1959 Ballad of a Soldier (Dir. GrigoryChukhrai,

Mosfilm, 1959) nominated for Oscar.

TypicalTraits of War Film post 1953

Engagingnarrative line

Realism (truthfulness) of depiction

Strong acting Innovativecamera

technique Absence of irony,

little satire Interweavingof

humour and dramatic moments

TypicalMotifs in War Film

Contrastbetweenbattlefront and rear

Ironicheroism of soldiers

The good commandingofficer

Corruption amongofficials in rear (party)

Faithfulnessof a soldier

Unfaithfulnessof a womanleftbehind

Ideological content

No mention of Stalin or communism

Simple moral system : good versus bad

Enemyisfaceless Heroismand

endurance of Russian/Soviet people

Solidarityof all peoples of Soviet Union and beyondagainstFascism

The Cranes Are Flying

Director Mikhail Kalatozov, 1957.

Camera: Sergei Urusevsky

Starring: Aleksei Batalov, Tatiana Samoilova

Simple plot, complicated psychology.

Influence of the war on lives of individuals.

The film does not condemn a “morally flawed” heroine: humanism and compassion.

Tragedy containing elements of humour and satire.

Composition (examples)

The film starts as films usually end: blissful happiness of young sweethearts running towards the horizon. The line of the embankment on the screen points to the “future.”

Important dialogues take place on the embankment, but the line is cut short.

The heroine carries a little boy, her perished lover’s namesake, along (another) embankment – the horizon opens again.

The Cranes Are Flying

The Cranes Are Flying

The Cranes Are Flying

The Cranes Are Flying

Innovative Filming Technique

Extensive use of handheld camera (“off-duty camera”) – frantic camera movements when the heroine, desperate, runs along the street (realism: Urusevsky, the cameraman, used to be a war correspondent).

Camera follows the heroine, without a cut, at eye level and then flies up to give a panorama. Speeds up – slows down.

Extreme close-ups. Eyes.

The villain’s feet trampling the broken glass (Hitchock-like, sinister shots). The heroine’s face upside down (her life turns upside down).

Innovative Filming Technique

Lighting and sound. Ex.: Sounds of the fire in a crumbling building suddenly stop as the heroine goes into shock. The only sound interrupting the silence is ticking of the clock amidst the ruins. The heroine reads a letter hearing her lover’s voice, “irrelevant” music on the background: sharp emotional contrast.

Blinking light during the scene of the rape.

The heroine moves from light to shadow when she learns that her lover has died.

Innovative Filming Technique

The camera follows the heroine and we join her point of view, but then switches to the crowd to show she is just one of the many.

Urusevsky invented circular rails for moving the camera.

The scene of the hero’s death involves constant rapid shifts of points of view (from “inside” – from the ground and from “outside” – from above).

The camera spins as he loses consciousness. Spinning trees.

The overlap of images renders the hero’s stream of consciousness (unexposed film used several times).

Innovative Filming Technique

The Ending

Optimistic, even though the hero is dead:

the villain is punished

the heroine has a closure

the war is over life goes on, new

children are born other young lovers

will not have to part