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 "excerpt": "The Cranes Are Flying (Летят журавли) is a 1957 Mosfilm war drama by Mikhail Kalatozov, starring Tatiana Samoilova and Aleksey Batalov; it won the 1958 Cannes Palme d'Or, the only Soviet feature to do so.",
 "snippet": "The Cranes Are Flying (Летят журавли) is a 1957 Mosfilm war drama by Mikhail Kalatozov, starring Tatiana Samoilova and Aleksey Batalov; it won the 1958 Cannes Palme d'Or, the only Soviet feature to do so.",
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 "markdown": "# The Cranes Are Flying (Летят журавли)\n\n**The Cranes Are Flying** (Летят журавли) is a 1957 Soviet war drama directed by Mikhail Kalatozov at Mosfilm, based on Viktor Rozov's play *Verno zhivye* (Вечно живые, \"Forever Alive\"), about a young couple, Veronika and Boris, separated by World War II<sup>[1](https://www.mosfilm.ru/cinema/films/letyat-zhuravli/)</sup>. It won the [Palme d'Or](https://www.edgepedia.org/palme-dor) at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival and is described as the only Soviet or Russian feature to have done so<sup>[2](https://www.criterion.com/films/547-the-cranes-are-flying)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[3](https://sightlines.media/film/38360/the-cranes-are-flying-1957)</sup>.\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Production | Mosfilm, 1957; director Mikhail Kalatozov, screenwriter Viktor Rozov, cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky, composer Moisei Weinberg<sup>[1](https://www.mosfilm.ru/cinema/films/letyat-zhuravli/)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[4](https://naukaru07.ru/en/nauka/publications/article/6a9c14e932807fdbab863963/experience-of-system-cinema-study-of-the-movie-the-cranes-are-flying/view)</sup> |\n| Source | Adapted from Viktor Rozov's play *Verno zhivye* (\"Forever Alive\")<sup>[1](https://www.mosfilm.ru/cinema/films/letyat-zhuravli/)</sup> |\n| Lead cast | Tatyana Samoilova (Veronika), Alexei Batalov (Boris), Vasily Merkuriev, Aleksandr Shvorin<sup>[1](https://www.mosfilm.ru/cinema/films/letyat-zhuravli/)</sup> |\n| Cannes | Palme d'Or, 1958 Cannes Film Festival; described as the only Soviet or Russian feature to win it<sup>[2](https://www.criterion.com/films/547-the-cranes-are-flying)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[5](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/2011/cannes-and-russia-a-love-hate-relationship/)</sup> |\n| Format | 96 minutes, black and white, 1.37:1, in Russian, Criterion Spine #146<sup>[2](https://www.criterion.com/films/547-the-cranes-are-flying)</sup> |\n| Historical role | The film that announced the post-Stalin cultural Thaw to the world, told through a flawed, forgivable heroine on the home front<sup>[3](https://sightlines.media/film/38360/the-cranes-are-flying-1957)</sup> |\n| Samoilova's prize | Special diploma for the lead role at the XI festival in Cannes<sup>[1](https://www.mosfilm.ru/cinema/films/letyat-zhuravli/)</sup> |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Story\n\nThe film follows Veronika (Tatyana Samoilova) and Boris (Alexei Batalov), lovers whose happiness is broken when Boris volunteers for the front in the early years of World War II<sup>[2](https://www.criterion.com/films/547-the-cranes-are-flying)</sup>. With Boris away, Veronika must ward off spiritual numbness and defend herself from the increasingly forceful advances of his draft-dodging cousin Mark (Aleksandr Shvorin)<sup>[2](https://www.criterion.com/films/547-the-cranes-are-flying)</sup>. Under the pressure of bombing, displacement, and grief, Veronika enters an unwanted marriage to Mark out of guilt and shame after he apparently forces her to have sex, while believing Boris is missing in action; she learns of Boris's death later.<sup>[6](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-cranes-are-flying/critic-reviews/)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[14](https://www.tcm.com/articles/158626/the-cranes-are-flying)</sup>. In the closing scenes, Veronika returns to Moscow amid the mass return of soldiers and finally comes to terms with Boris's death<sup>[3](https://sightlines.media/film/38360/the-cranes-are-flying-1957)</sup>. The title's image of flying cranes appears at the end, symbolizing hope and the souls of the fallen<sup>[7](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/7724/)</sup>.\n\n## The Thaw context\n\nStalin's death in 1953 opened a \"thaw\" in Soviet society, made explicit after [Nikita Khrushchev](https://www.edgepedia.org/nikita-khrushchev)'s February 1956 speech at the Twentieth Party Congress denouncing Stalin and his cult of personality<sup>[8](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/200)</sup>. *The Cranes Are Flying* was produced at Mosfilm in 1957, at the symbolic midpoint of that period<sup>[3](https://sightlines.media/film/38360/the-cranes-are-flying-1957)</sup>. Where the Stalin-era war film monumentalized the state, the army, and the leader, this film relocates the war to the home front and the wounded individual, and tells the sacred war story through a heroine who is flawed and forgivable<sup>[3](https://sightlines.media/film/38360/the-cranes-are-flying-1957)</sup>. At a prerelease screening it produced what the [Criterion](https://www.edgepedia.org/criterion) essay describes as a collective ecstasy among film professionals; the director Mikhail Romm confessed that he had sat through the whole movie in tears<sup>[8](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/200)</sup>.\n\nThe film was not the first Soviet work to re-evaluate the war from a personal perspective, but contemporary scholarship rates it the most daring and the most successful of its moment, paving the way for Grigori Chukhrai's *Ballad of a Soldier* (1959) and [Andrei Tarkovsky](https://www.edgepedia.org/andrei-tarkovsky)'s *Ivan's Childhood* (1962)<sup>[9](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/soviet-cinema/the-cranes-are-flying-soviet-cinema/)</sup>.\n\n## Cinematography\n\nThe film's reputation rests heavily on the camerawork of Sergei Urusevsky, Kalatozov's regular collaborator, whose handheld, gravity-defying camera turns Veronika's distress into visual experience<sup>[2](https://www.criterion.com/films/547-the-cranes-are-flying)</sup>. Kalatozov called the method the \"emotional camera\": elaborate handheld takes that put his characters' feelings in purely visual terms<sup>[10](https://www.nzfilmsociety.org.nz/uploads/4/4/8/5/44856883/close_up_2026_sml.pdf)</sup>. A custom spinning elevator camera rig was used to film a bravura staircase sequence<sup>[11](https://trailersfromhell.com/the-cranes-are-flying/)</sup>. Critics have compared the camera's movement to techniques that anticipated drones by decades<sup>[12](https://theweereview.com/review/the-cranes-are-flying/)</sup>, and the film's fluidity has been read as prescient of the [French New Wave](https://www.edgepedia.org/french-new-wave) of the early 1960s<sup>[3](https://sightlines.media/film/38360/the-cranes-are-flying-1957)</sup>.\n\nUrusevsky was a perfectionist on set: a crew member recalled that he once canceled a full day's shoot because the right shaped cloud failed to materialize<sup>[12](https://theweereview.com/review/the-cranes-are-flying/)</sup>. According to later scholarship, Urusevsky himself was not fully satisfied, complaining that editorial influence produced a series of \"conversational\" and \"prosaic\" scenes that diluted the poetic principle<sup>[13](https://rusfilm-old.pitt.edu/booklets/Thaw.pdf)</sup>.\n\n## Reception and legacy\n\nThe Cannes triumph ensured the film a cultural impact, by one Criterion account, arguably greater than that of any Soviet film since before the war<sup>[8](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/200)</sup>. It enjoyed extensive distribution in Western and [Eastern Europe](https://www.edgepedia.org/eastern-europe), Latin America, and parts of Asia, and placed Soviet cinema back at the center of the art-film conversation just as the European new waves were forming<sup>[9](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/soviet-cinema/the-cranes-are-flying-soviet-cinema/)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[3](https://sightlines.media/film/38360/the-cranes-are-flying-1957)</sup>.\n\nContemporary critics have continued to rate it highly. Bosley Crowther wrote in *The New York Times* that Kalatozov's direction and Samoilova's performance produce \"a tremendous feeling of sympathy... that has no awareness of geographical or political bounds\"<sup>[6](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-cranes-are-flying/critic-reviews/)</sup>. Slant Magazine calls it one of the greatest films of the Soviet era<sup>[6](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-cranes-are-flying/critic-reviews/)</sup>. [The Criterion Collection](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-criterion-collection) released it as Spine #146, with a 2K digital restoration and supplements including a 1961 audio interview with Kalatozov and the 2009 documentary *Hurricane Kalatozov* on the Georgian director's complicated relationship with the Soviet government<sup>[2](https://www.criterion.com/films/547-the-cranes-are-flying)</sup>. In recent years the film's standing has been partly shared with Kalatozov's rediscovered 1964 film *[I Am Cuba](https://www.edgepedia.org/i-am-cuba)*<sup>[10](https://www.nzfilmsociety.org.nz/uploads/4/4/8/5/44856883/close_up_2026_sml.pdf)</sup>. The Criterion essay concludes that, tested by time, the film endures as a classic of Soviet cinema<sup>[8](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/200)</sup>.\n\n## References\n\n1. [Летят журавли, Mosfilm official page](https://www.mosfilm.ru/cinema/films/letyat-zhuravli/)\n2. [The Cranes Are Flying (1957), The Criterion Collection](https://www.criterion.com/films/547-the-cranes-are-flying)\n3. [The Cranes Are Flying (1957) — Sightlines](https://sightlines.media/film/38360/the-cranes-are-flying-1957)\n4. [Experience of System Cinema Study of the Movie \"The Cranes Are Flying\", Siberian Art History Journal](https://naukaru07.ru/en/nauka/publications/article/6a9c14e932807fdbab863963/experience-of-system-cinema-study-of-the-movie-the-cranes-are-flying/view)\n5. [Cannes and Russia: A Love-Hate Relationship, Festival de Cannes](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/2011/cannes-and-russia-a-love-hate-relationship/)\n6. [The Cranes Are Flying critic reviews, Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-cranes-are-flying/critic-reviews/)\n7. [Летят журавли (1957), Kinopoisk](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/7724/)\n8. [The Cranes Are Flying: A Free Camera, The Criterion Collection Current](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/200)\n9. [1957: The Cranes Are Flying, Senses of Cinema](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/soviet-cinema/the-cranes-are-flying-soviet-cinema/)\n10. [NZ Film Society Close Up programme on Kalatozov](https://www.nzfilmsociety.org.nz/uploads/4/4/8/5/44856883/close_up_2026_sml.pdf)\n11. [The Cranes are Flying, Trailers From Hell / CineSavant](https://trailersfromhell.com/the-cranes-are-flying/)\n12. [The Cranes Are Flying, The Wee Review](https://theweereview.com/review/the-cranes-are-flying/)\n13. [The Thaw film booklet, Pittsburgh Russian Film Symposium](https://rusfilm-old.pitt.edu/booklets/Thaw.pdf)\n14. [The Cranes Are Flying](https://www.tcm.com/articles/158626/the-cranes-are-flying)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › War and historical films (individual works) › War action and adventure › War action films released through 1999 › Released 1934 to 1962*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n",
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 "speakable": "The Cranes Are Flying is a 1957 Mosfilm war drama by Mikhail Kalatozov, starring Tatiana Samoilova and Aleksey Batalov; it won the 1958 Cannes Palme d'Or, the only Soviet feature to do so."
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