Letter Never Sent (Neotpravlennoye pismo)

LETTER NEVER SENT (Neotpravlennoye pismo)      B+                  

aka:  The Unmailed Letter 

Russia  (97 mi)  1960  d:  Mikhail Kalatozov

A rarely screened film, this is the third film collaboration between Kalatozov and his legendary cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky, who was a front-line cameraman during WWII where he obviously learned the art of camera mobility from first hand experience literally decades before its time.  Urusevsky’s brilliant work in this film is notorious for having influenced several scenes in Francis Ford Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW (1979), most likely the speed of the camera as it whizzes through the Siberian forest remaining completely in focus capturing people running through natural environments.  Of note, on the night the film was screened, which began at 8 pm, there was a full lunar eclipse (2/20/08) NASA - Total Lunar Eclipse: February 20, 2008, reaching its peak for about one hour from 9 to 10 pm.  Conveniently, the Russian Cyrillic language was completely indecipherable by the student projectionists at Northwestern University’s Block Cinema who could not figure out how to do reel changes with so many ten-minute reels, causing them on two occasions to completely stop the film, turn on the lights, take a brief break and figure out how to organize the next segment before continuing.  This allowed the audience to run outside on a perfectly clear night in the frigid 5 degree winter temperatures to observe the natural phenomena happening in the sky.  For these incidents to have occurred during a film that revolves around man’s fragile relationship to the natural world around him felt like no accident, like the stars were all properly aligned.

In the spirit of pioneer exploration, dedicated to all the Soviet people, this film bears a similarity to Carroll Ballard’s NEVER CRY WOLF (1983), opening in the sky high above the clouds, a group of four Russian geologists are flown into a remote Siberian forest in search of what they believe will be an immense diamond vein.  Left on a riverbank with all their gear and equipment tossed in a heap, the camera is the viewpoint of the helicopter as it lifts into the sky and flies away, leaving them as tiny specks on the ground.  Tatyana Samojlova returns as Tanya, the only female of the group, making a large impression after she comes out of a swim with her nipples noticeably protruding.  This raises a certain amount of sexual tension as she is married to the feeblest man in the group, the intellectually inclined radio man Sabinine (Innokenti Smoktuvosky) who discovers Sergei (Yevgeni Urbansky), the man best acquainted with outdoor wilderness skills, may have his eye on her as well.  The fourth man appears to be the team leader and guide, the level-headed Andrei (Vasili Livanov).  Digging a series of holes in the ground, they may as well be digging their graves, as their search proves futile until Andrei convinces them to stay beyond their agreed upon duration, featuring a series of close up shots and a shirtless Sergei hoisting an ax, capturing a Dovzhenko-like rhythm of work until ultimately they find what they’re looking for.  They patriotically raise their glasses toasting the future pioneers of the Soviet space race, believing they have discovered a means to fund their mission.  

Despite several name actors, their influence is diminished by the rather sappy story, instead what can’t help capturing our attention is the physical appeal of that Urusevsky camera that never rests and some bold, over the top Russian music by Nikolai Kryukov, whose credits go back to the 30’s, actually helping revise musical scores in the late 40’s and 50’s for Eisenstein’s POTEMKIN (1925) and several early Pudovkin films.  The balance between the artistry is extremely effective as they do capture a Russian flavor that we see again in Tarkovsky’s Ivan's Childhood (1962), especially the scenes of men sloshing around the lakes and wetlands deep inside the Russian forests, featuring unforgettable images of birch trees and a recollection of music back home, but also that incredible train shot in Stalker (1979).  The optimism of the film is immediately upended when a huge forest fire breaks out and they need to make a desperate escape, discovering their boat is lost and their radio can’t transmit messages. Basically lost in what turns into a desolate Siberian wasteland, what follows is a lesson in survival as they are trapped inside the inferno of a burning forest that stretches for miles in every direction, eventually costing several of them their lives, ultimately running out of food and supplies, as their boots wear out, leaving them defenseless against the onset of ruthlessly brutal winter conditions that arrive in the blink of an eye, as fire suddenly turns to a river of ice.  The pace of the film slows to a crawl, resembling the monotonous pace of GERRY (2002), while also expressing the hopelessly unforgiving conditions in the finale of Masaki Kobayashi’s THE HUMAN CONDITION (1961), which this film may well have influenced.  The poetic beauty of the primeval wilderness belies its deadly capabilities, as humans occasionally are no match for the elements of nature, yet this film etches some of the more indelible images, reminders of how the earth once existed alone, immense, and untroubled by man’s presence.

The Loneliest Planet

THE LONELIEST PLANET        B                

USA  Germany  (113 mi)  2011  d:  Julia Loktev 

The rise of the road increases, the mountains close in more and more tightly, and it seems as though there is no longer any hope; only a bit of sky is visible above our heads. It has a disheartening effect on us; we are overwhelmed and keep silent. Suddenly, at a sharp turn in the road, a huge chasm opens up on our right… 

—In Wonderland, on his visit to the Russian Caucasus in 1899 by Knut Hamsun,1903 

Julia Loktev emigrated to America from Russia at age 9, so she s intimately familiar with the immigrant experience, which she uses here as a kind of minimalist existential travelogue through the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia, one of the former Soviet satellite countries bordering Russia, now an independent nation since 1991.  This foreign sensibility is at the heart of the film, though it’s transposed into the midst of an immense mountainous landscape where Alex (Gael García Bernal) and Nica (Hani Furstenberg) are a young couple in love and about to be married spending the summer backpacking across Georgia, hiring a local guide, Dato (Bidzina Gujabidze), a non-professional actor who is in real life a professional mountaineer.  This is about as bare bones a story as you’re going to find, offering little to no backstory, most all of it untranslated at the beginning, as people communicate in mixed languages (where the director’s knowledge of Russian helped her with the older generation in Georgia), where the three of them simply set off into the mountainous back country, where the presence of humans barely registers in this otherwise pristine wilderness.  Adapted by the director from a Tom Bissell story Expensive Trips Nowhere, the film continually draws upon other sources, perhaps most centrally the Georgian/Russian film director Mikhail Kalatozov’s Letter Never Sent (Neotpravlennoye pismo) (1960) and his legendary WWII cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky whose camera mobility is renowned, following a psychological shift from professionalism to the deteriorating mental breakdown of a small scientific team dropped off in the vast Siberian forest.  The only female in the group, Tatyana Samojlova from The Cranes Are Flying (Letyat zhuravli) (1957), creates sexual tension between her physically timid and intellectually reserved husband and the more virile, masculine outdoorsman of the group, set against the remote Siberian wilderness, pitting the forces of human nature against what eventually becomes the strongest force in the film, the dominating primeval landscape.    

In this film we have two cultural sensibilities pitted against one another, an attractive, free spirited woman in the company of a Western and Eastern European male companion, where she’s having a sexual affair with Alex under the watchful eye of their semi-educated guide and the silent presence of the great outdoors.  Using hand held cameras from cinematographer Inti Briones, the entire film is a walking expedition through an immensely beautiful region with little more to hold our attention than the region itself.  The insipid dialogue or barely communicated thoughts reveal little interior depth of character, where all remain a stranger to one another, spending most of their time walking separately, lost in their own thoughts, though at the end of the day after pitching their tents they make feeble efforts to talk, drink, sing, or socialize, but the film never penetrates the exterior façade of any of them.  If anything, the couple remains in a lighthearted and playful mood, where they can barely take their hands off each other until a single event challenges their carefree nonchalance, an event that is never discussed but is allowed to fester, like an open wound.  Like two separate halves of a film, the second half becomes more brooding and introspective, especially as seen through Western eyes, as Nica spends most all of the first half with Alex, but the two barely speak afterwards, where their continual walking becomes an exercise of drudgery, even through such a magnificent landscape.  Nonetheless, the camera holds tight with the visceral feel for extended hiking, walking until nearly exhausted, where Alex collapses into bed while Nica has a prolonged scene sharing drinks over a night fire with Dato, who attempts to open up about his life, bringing an Eastern sensibility into the picture, where what is expected of him is completely different. 

What’s missing in this film is the overwhelming force unleashed by the Siberian forest in Kalatozov’s film, where any human presence was quickly placed in peril, with all previous psychological mind games and personal motivations rendered moot, as survival was at stake.  Here the effect is much too subtle, where there is a major behavior difference, but most all of it interior, used to little overall dramatic effect.  Instead, the focus of the film remains on the physical movement of hiking itself, similar to mechanized feet in a Bresson film, but much more of it, becoming a dreary and overwhelmingly monotonous exercise without human interaction, where the pace of the film slows to a crawl, resembling the treacherous pace of GERRY (2002).  Often seen in long shots where humans are mere specks dotting the landscape, where the director once backpacked alone across Central Asia from Turkmenistan to Kazakhstan for six months at age 22, bringing that same feeling of isolation into what starts to feel like a misadventure, as if something terribly wrong is contaminating the souls of each one of them, where their mood grows darker and more bleak, holding out little hope of repairing whatever’s broken.  The film recalls the interior structure of Atom Egoyan’s CALENDAR (1993), where a Canadian-Armenian couple drift apart while visiting ancient ruins in their European homeland, where the girl is inevitably drawn to their handsome guide, leaving the narrator to fend for himself in what amounts to a strange land.  Unfortunately, while there is a hint of major psychological repression from suffocating interior claustrophobia, Loktev fails to bring any element of suspense or mystery into the long and arduous journey, becoming painstakingly empty after awhile, where the significant drama is all taking place under the surface, expressed through the rigorous minimalism of her earlier film, DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT (2006), constructing a film through the meticulous accumulation of minutiae.   

The Ascent (Voskhozhdeniye)

Larisa Shepitko with cinematographer Vladimir Chukhnov








THE ASCENT (Voskhozhdeniye)                    A                    

Russia  (111 mi)  1976  d:  Larisa Shepitko

Shepitko, who died in a car accident a few years after making this film, is the wife of Russian filmmaker Elem Klimov, who directed the more commercially known film Come and See (Idi i smotri) (1984), generally regarded the most graphically realistic war film ever, bar none, notable for its searing poetic intensity, but perhaps lacks the inner complexity of this even greater Russian film, arguably the best Soviet era war film ever made that examines not just the graphic outer horrors, but Shepitko finds truly inspiring images focusing on individuals or small groups of characters that reflect the absolute insanity taking place inside these human beings, the ending of which is simply awe-inspiring.  Set in Belarus, bullets are flying and bodies are dying in a gun skirmish over the opening credits, where the intensity of the film never lets up throughout the duration, focusing on grim faces, worn out soldiers with next to nothing to eat, a terrified population under occupation, starving children with petrified mothers, all cast in an immense landscape of endless white snow.  Like The Cranes Are Flying (Letyat zhuravli) (1957), this features a Russian army in retreat, a traumatizing shock early in the war when they were nearly wiped out.  The Russian countryside has been overrun by German Nazi’s who are terrorizing the citizens, stealing what food they have, forcing them under duress to become their informant eyes and ears.  What Russian soldiers are left hide under cover of forests, but are forced to send food expeditions out to neighboring farms.  This film follows two soldiers that from the outset are on a near impossible mission, as there’s little food left anywhere in the dead of winter.  One is healthy and fit, Vladimir Gostyukhin as Rybak, while the other, Boris Plotnikov as Sotnikov, is slowed down by a tubercular sounding cough and eventually a bullet in his leg that nearly leaves him for dead, but his partner heroically rescues him.  As they step through knee deep snow drifts, crawling at some points with insufficient protection against the harsh elements, like so many other Russian films, nature itself becomes their toughest foe.  

Everything is reduced to a matter of survival.  When they reach their destination, the farm has been demolished and left in a state of rubble, pushing forward into German occupied territory where the next farm is manned by an elderly Soviet collaborator who fears Nazi retribution.  The partisan soldiers think him a coward but move on, where they are eventually captured and brought to a Nazi camp in a nearby town and held as prisoners, along with a proud and protective mother (Lyudmila Polyakova) who helped hide them.  Tarkovsky stalwart Anatoliy Solonitsyn appears as Portnov the interrogator, a Russian teacher from a nearby academy turned Nazi sympathizer.  Russians torturing and executing fellow Russians is the depth of war depravity and Solonitsyn is brilliant in a despicable role he’s perfectly suited for.  From what we can see, as Nazi officers chat jovially in close proximity to one another, he is an outsider even among this group, seen instead as a kind of gruesome black-cloaked undertaker who routinely sends men to their graves.  The audience is not spared from witnessing acts of torture to Sotnikov, who offers nothing but contempt, while Rybak speaks freely, hoping to save his life, but both are condemned to die, though Rybak is offered a chance to serve the German Reich as a police agent.  The mother, the elderly collaborator, and a child are added to this group, spending one last night together alive where together they discuss the merits of a soldier’s mission, of being a patriot, a mother, a coward, or a collaborator.  Each seems individually driven by a desperate need to survive, but Sotnikov offers himself as a selfless example, attempting to confess his guilt to spare the others, where the aptly chosen title reflects his (and his nation’s) spiritual redemption.

By the next morning, Portnov seems mildly amused, mocking them at their sudden willingness to talk, but spares no one except Rybak, who changes sides to keep his life, rationalizing in his thoughts that if he’s alive, at least he has a chance to escape.  But there is no escape—not from this torment.  What happens is shown with exquisite delicacy and poetic grace, an elegy, a remembrance of the dead, as we witness the treachery of war without a single shot being fired, as the execution by hanging is turned into a public spectacle, where the villagers at the point of a gun are forced to witness.  The pace and harrowing interior intensity of this film is relentless, as there is never a moment without impending menace, gorgeously shot by Vladimir Chukhnov (who died in the same tragic car accident as Shepitko), featuring perfectly composed landscapes and plenty of camera movement, much of it at close range showing the visceral physicality of exhaustive effort, such as the single extended take of Rybak’s rescue of Sotnikov, breath by breath, foot by foot, literally dragging him through the snow, but also using portraitures, especially that of a fierce young boy at the end who eyes the condemned men, the next generation making a surreal sympathetic connection without any words being spoken, accentuated by the psychologically horrific music of Alfred Shnittke which resembles the transcendent yet furiously disturbing monolith music from Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968).  The sound design of this film is highly advanced and uniquely modern, where the use of offscreen sound continually exposes the raw nerves of each moment, dogs barking, wind blowing, bullets firing, nearby Nazi’s chattering in untranslated German or laughing sadistically at their helplessness, which only ratchets up the hideous tension to insane heights.  In many ways resembling Dreyer’s THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928), utter insanity is exposed here, the relentless realization that you have no choice, yet you are forced to make one anyway.  The nightmarish inner thoughts at the end are expressed wordlessly, where the nobility of the dead speaks volumes, where voices continue to reverberate inside the heads of the living like an explosion of neverending echoes, yet only silence fills the crisp wintry air with a mournful reverence and a profound sense of loss.   

The Cranes Are Flying (Letyat zhuravli)

THE CRANES ARE FLYING (Letyat zhuravli)          A               

Russia  (94 mi)  1957  d:  Mikhail Kalatozov

1956 was the 20th Congress of the Communist Party and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev made a speech denouncing Stalin and the Stalinist purges and the gulag labor systems, revealing information that was previously forbidden, publicly revealing horrible new truths, which opened the door for a new Soviet Cinema led by Mikhail Kalatozov, once Stalin’s head of film production.  This film features a Red Army that is NOT victorious, in fact they are encircled, in a retreat mode, with many people dying, including the hero, in a film set after 06-02-41, the German invasion of Russia when Germany introduced Operation Barbarossa, a blitzkrieg invasion intended to bring about a quick victory and the ultimate enslavement of the Slavs, and very nearly succeeded, actually getting within 20 miles of Moscow in what was a Red Army wipe out, a devastation of human losses, where throughout the war 22 to 26 million Russians died, or 15 – 20% of the entire population.  Historically, this was a moment of great trauma and suffering, a psychological shock to the Russian people, but the Red Army held and prolonged the war 4 more years until they were ultimately victorious.

During the war, Stalin used the war genre in films for obvious morale boosting, introducing female heroines who were ultra-patriotic and strong and idealistic, suggesting that if females could be so successful and patriotic, then Russia could expect at least as much from their soldiers.  Stalin eliminated the mass hero of the proletariat and replaced it with an individual, bold leader who was successful at killing many of the enemy, an obvious reference to Stalin himself, who was always portrayed in film as a bold, wise and victorious leader.  But Kalatozov changed this depiction, as THE CRANES ARE FLYING was made after Stalin’s death, creating a political thaw and causing a worldwide sensation, winning the Cannes Film Festival Palme D’Or in 1958, as well as the Best Director and Best Actress (Tatyana Samojlova), reawakening the West to Soviet Cinema for the first time since Eisenstein’s IVAN THE TERRIBLE (1944) in the 40’s. 

Adapated by Viktor Rozov from his own play, this film features brilliant, breathtaking, and extremely mobile camera work from his extraordinary cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky, using spectacular crane and tracking shots that literally glide through the streets, always creating an exhilarating sense of motion, featuring near hallucinogenic images of wartime, battlefields, also Moscow and crowded streets that are urgently vivid and real.  The story is simple, a couple blissfully in love are separated by the German invasion.  Boris (Aleksey Batalov) is called to the front leaving Veronica behind, who is superbly played by Tatyana Samojlova, who represents for Soviet films a more truthful character, asking Boris selfishly, “What about me?” when he announces he is off to war.  When Boris hears his father, a doctor at the hospital, consoling a wounded, demented soldier who wants an immediate end to his life because his girl married someone who stayed at home, his father tells him that it would be her disgrace, not his, as she would never know his bravery, describing such a woman:  “There will be no pardon for her.”

With Boris off to war, Veronica is chased by Boris’s cousin Mark (Aleksandr Shvorin), who uses his corrupt influence to get an exemption from serving in the army, eventually raping Veronica in a visually dizzying air raid sequence, where Veronica is under siege from Mark at the same time Russia is under siege from Germany, mirroring the war in her personal relationship, revealing the enemy within.  Losing one’s virginity was cause for marriage in Soviet society, which actually boosted Mark’s chances, particularly after not hearing from Boris after 4 years of war, so he was presumed dead.  But she hates Mark and retains her romantic yearning for Boris, as expressed in one of the many brilliant scenes when she actually exposes Mark cheating on her.  In perhaps the sequence of the film, her mind in utter turmoil, shot in a wintry bleakness, she runs towards a bridge with a train following closely behind her, a moment when the viewer is wondering if she might throw herself in front of that train in despair, but instead she saves a 3-year old boy also named Boris who was about to be hit by a car.

Another exceptional scene captures the death of Boris on the battlefield, who dies a senseless death, and his thoughts spin and whirl in a beautiful montage of trees, sky, leaves, all spinning in a kaleidoscope of his own thoughts and dreams, including his lost love, envisioning an imaginary wedding with Veronica.  This film features the famous line, “You can dream when the war is over.”  In the final sequence, when the war is finally over and soldiers are returning in a mass celebratory scene on the streets, where Veronica finally learns for certain that Boris died, all are happy and excited with the soldier’s return, but Veronica is in utter despair, passing out flowers to soldiers and strangers on the street in an extreme gesture of generosity and selflessness revealing with poetic insight “cranes white and gray floating in the sky.”

The film was released in 1957 in Russia, and according to some reviews, “the silence in the theater was profound, the wall between art and living life had fallen...and tears unlocked the doors.”

Trial On the Road (Proverka na dorogakh)

TRIAL ON THE ROAD (Proverka na dorogakh)        A                    

Russia  (96 mi)  1971  ‘Scope  d:  Aleksei German

Set during the Battle of Stalingrad, one of the bloodiest battles in history leaving nearly two million dead, this is an uncommonly bleak war film, but one which perfectly captures the mood of Russian starvation and deprivation during the 3-year Nazi occupation of Belarus, exactly the same region portrayed in Elem Klimov's Come and See (Idi i smotri) (1985), where the German Army devoted 50,000 troops to rounding up and killing Jews, where somewhere between one and two million Soviet Jews were killed, also many thousands of Soviet civilians were executed, while millions died of starvation.  As they retreated from Ukraine and Belarus, the German occupiers applied a scorched earth policy, burning Belarusian villages to the ground, slaughtering all the inhabitants, literally attempting to wipe Russians off the face of the earth, leaving whatever civilians that survived to starve or die of exposure to the cold.  The maltreatment of the local population from this sadistically planned death march contributed to rising factions allied against the Nazi’s, including many non-Russian nationalists and anti-communists who allied with the Soviet partisans.  This film reflects some of that torn allegiance, based on a story Operation Happy New Year! inspired by real events documented by the director’s father Yuri, a friend of Gorky, also a playwright and war reporter, where the main character is a Junior Sergeant in the Red Army, Lazarev (Vladimir Zamanskiy), who in the early stages of World War II defects to the Nazi’s under mysterious circumstances, claiming he was forced along with many others, but by the winter of 1942 he turns himself back over to the Russian partisans, where he remains under intense scrutiny.  So long as he’s useful and can perform under duress, he’s welcomed by the more benevolent commander Lieutenant Lokotkov (Rolan Bykov), who may have a special assignment for him, while the more disciplined Party enforcer and most likely member of the secret police, is Major Petushkov, played by Tarkovsky favorite Anatoliy Solonitsyn, an intolerant and overly strict officer that repeatedly places him under arrest, continually testing his psychological fortitude.

The film was banned for 15 years due to the morally conflicted lead Russian character whose actions are paramount to wartime treason, hardly a fit example according to the teachings of the Party, remaining shelved until Party Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev released the film under the more lenient terms of glasnost.  The film joins the ranks of several other major Russian war masterpieces, Kalatozov’s eye-opening The Cranes Are Flying (Letyat zhuravli) (1957) or Larisa Shepitko’s (Elem Klimov’s wife) psychologically disturbing The Ascent (Voskhozhdeniye) (1977), each one challenging the Stalinist conception of what constitutes a Russian hero during wartime.  Perhaps the only character that fills the traditional role of Soviet hero is Petushkov, a Stalinist seen wearing a Chekist cap, the insignia of the secret police, but in the film, he comes across as severely intolerant and narrow minded, refusing to even consider the possibility that Lazarev is anything but a traitor to his country and deserves to be shot.  His view is reflected after the war, where the routine prison sentence for those who fought for the other side was 10 to 25 years, no questions asked, even when guns were pointed at their heads to force compliance.  This strict adherence to order (when there was no order) is more reminiscent of German ideology, refusing to consider the madness of war, where often decisions are made at the barrel of a gun, or perhaps to save someone else’s life, where a refusal to even look at the underlying psychological implications of changing sides seems to be incompatible with bravery or true heroism.  More likely the film takes notice of the small pleasures of Lokotkov, the everyday, ordinary man, often seen soaking his feet in hot water after a day spent marching through the snow, or enjoying a joke with his fellow soldiers, where he was a local policeman before the war, a man used to sizing up people during interrogations, where despite his previous errant behavior, he doesn’t view Lazarev as a threat to his men, but keeps a close eye on him.  His way of dealing with the situation is assigning the man hard work, where his performance will be duly noted.  The conflict between the two Russian officers is a major theme of the film, constantly probing for the existence of humanity during wartime. 

The film opens in a downpour of rain, where the austere realism couldn’t be more downbeat, reflecting the grim weariness of war, as soldiers are forced to move tanks and heavy artillery through oceans of mud, where they never dry off, leading to a deplorable mental state while also succumbing to a kind of battle rot that literally inhabits their bodies.  This  is one of the better films highlighting the extreme conditions of battle, including the paralyzing Soviet winter that precipitated massive fatalities on both sides due to starvation and freezing, literally taking the viewer into the heart of a small group of Russian partisans knee deep in the forest snows, occasionally making ambushes on the road, stealing whatever guns or provisions they can find, often surrounded by heavy woods, where they make their camp among the birch trees.  What follows afterwards is another isolated shot of a rural farmhouse where a woman (Maya Bulgakova) lives with two small children with no food or livestock, all stolen long ago, where her deteriorating state of mind leaves her in a paralyzed state of near madness, cursing the soldiers before following after them, as they are her only choice for survival.  From out of the woods, a lone soldier in a German uniform overpowers a young Russian partisan, but then hands him his rifle and turns himself in.  Thus begins a snowy and often bewildering journey of whether or not a man can clear his conscience and redeem the mistakes he’s made in his life.  Initially set for the firing squad, they have to move camp instantly due to an unexpected emergency, expressed in an eerie morning scene in the fog when marching German soldiers appear out of the fog, seen as silhouettes lining the entire landscape.  

Given a second chance, Lazarev has an opportunity to prove himself on the road, assassinating two Germans by himself, but when one gets a shot off before he dies, killing one of his Russian compatriots, Petushkov is sure the bullet was Lazarev’s, implicating him in murder even after risking his life, sending him into a tailspin of depression where he literally attempts suicide.  It is Lokotkov that slowly brings him back to life, giving him a chance to erase his disloyalty, but under no illusions about having betrayed his nation, where by now the terms hero and traitor have little significant meaning any more, where in the moral ambiguity of war it’s hard enough just to survive, sending him out on a still more dangerous mission, as they need to re-route a German supply train that can help feed his starving troops.  The film is interspersed with an absolutely haunting use of Russian music from Isaak Shvarts, who composed music for nearly 100 films, where one of the most unforgettable shots is seeing a barge packed with Russian POW’s as they float effortlessly down the river while the German guards play Russian music, where Lokotkov is perched overhead, set to blow up a German train crossing the bridge over the river, but he refuses to do so if it means killing so many Russian POW’s directly below when the train passes, where his refusal to act is in itself an act of courage.  The extended finale is a dazzling set piece in the snow, much of it seen from the vantage point of a watch tower, featuring tracking shots in and around the trains, also plenty of handheld camerawork from Lev Kolganov, B. Aleksandrovsky, and Yakov Skylansky, creating what is easily the most dramatic action sequence in the director’s career.  The film is considered the greatest Soviet feature film debut since Tarkovsky’s harrowing first film Ivan's Childhood (1962).

White Nights (La Niotti Bianche)

WHITE NIGHTS (La Niotti Bianche)     A-                 

Italy  France  (97 mi)  1957  d:  Luchino Visconti

1957 is a significant year in world cinema, as it is uniquely connected to historical events, coming one year after the spirited idealism of the Hungarian student uprising of 1956 was crushed by an invasion of Soviet tanks mowing down dissidents in the streets of Budapest, also one year after the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party where Premier Nikita Khrushchev made a speech denouncing Stalin and the Stalinist purges as well as the gulag labor systems, leading to the Russian release of THE CRANES ARE FLYING (1957), the first film after the death of Stalin to put a human face in Russian films, which went on to win the Palme D’Or at Cannes in 1958.  What’s unique about this era is a political thaw, an opening of doors previously closed, where art could once again flourish and express itself freely and openly without having to follow the dictates of a heavy handed, State-controlled social realist agenda.  This also led to a changing style in Italian cinema, where the post-war Neo-Realist movement softened its grip, allowing greater freedoms onscreen than ever before, which led to Fellini’s NIGHTS OF CABIRIA (1957), featuring the incomparable Giuletta Masina, which arguably stands up to anything Fellini ever created in his lifetime, and also this film by Luchino Visconti, which couldn’t be more unlike his earlier works, moving from naturalistic, on-site locations into a completely artificially constructed world inside the Cinecittà studios, much of it set in a dreamlike layer of fog, beautifully illuminated by street lamps.  The set design of this film is hugely imaginative, transporting Dostoevsky’s short story White Nights from the closely observed detail of St. Petersburg to an Italian city of bridges and canals, loosely based on the city of Livorno.  Bresson remade this film in Paris as Four Nights of a Dreamer (Quatre nuits d'un rêveur... (1971), and what the two versions have in common is a beautifully idealized construction of a utopian vision, something rarely seen in cinema. 

Opening pensively with the enchanting Nino Rota theme heard here Nino Rota - Le Notti Bianche (1957) on YouTube (2:48), Marcello Mastroianni as Mario finds himself alone on the city streets at night after spending a pleasant but uneventful afternoon in the country with his boss and extended family.  A recent transplant to the city, he knows no one, so he takes in the rhythm and atmosphere of the streets around him, where a realist element continues to exist in the way the walls are crumbling and the paint peeling, with piles of garbage swept off to the side of the street where he unsuccessfully attempts to make friends with a stray dog.  What catches his eye is a woman standing alone on a bridge trying to hide her tears, German-Austrian actress Maria Schell, who he immediately befriends.  But despite his polite manner, she quickly runs away, evading his every advance, but eventually relents and agrees to meet him on the bridge the next night.  While it should be noted that there was always an unreconciled tension between the socialist agenda of neorealism and the operatic theatricality of Visconti, who after all, filmed three versions of Verdi’s La Traviata in his lifetime, it is also often said he is one of the greatest directors of women, including Clara Calamai in OBSESSIONE (1943), Anna Magnani in BELLISSIMA (1951), Alida Valli in SENSO (1954), Annie Girardot in ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS (1960), but also Ms. Schell as Natalia in this film.  In each case, these females use men for sport and wreak their havoc with a psychic force men can neither resist nor overcome.  Natalia is a perfect example, though some might find her performance overly simple and childish, living at home, never leaving the side of her blind grandmother, she is the picture of innocence and naïveté, yet when the floodgates of emotions are released, she is a force of nature, revealing a hidden dimension of love held in reserve for a lodger (Jean Marais) in her grandmother’s house that she met and fell in love with a year ago, briefly seen through flashbacks, but he had to abruptly leave, agreeing to meet her on the bridge in exactly one year.  Finding this story fairy tale-like and delusional, Mario can’t help but suspend his disbelief if only to comfort her, as she is in considerable pain at the thought he won’t show up.

Over the course of four nights, they meet on the bridge, where by the last night, Mario is tired of being sucked into her continuing melodrama.  Despite all evidence to the contrary, Natalia lives in constant hope, believing with the purity of a child, where to dispel her notion is simply cruel and unethical, leaving Mario no choice but to play along.  What’s especially interesting is to see how Dostoevsky’s story of a hopelessly adrift male dreamer attaches himself to an even more innocent girl, whose own dreamlife simply overwhelms his, where Visconti shows Mario grounded by the poverty of his economcis, as he’s so regrettably poor, awakening in his pitiful room every morning to the gossip and chatter of his intrusive landlady, who has a way of getting into everybody’s business, where there is nothing remotely evident of a private thought.  With Natalia, however, hearing her hold fast to her illusions has an almost calming and tranquil effect, as it takes the dreariness out of his own miserable life.  By the final night, however, Mario is convinced their own love can work, little by little building up his courage in admitting how he feels, which is perfectly expressed in a dance sequence where he starts out confessing his shyness, knowing nothing about dance, remaining coy until another man shows an interest in his girl, where he suddenly lights up the room in an outrageously intoxicating sequence set to the music of “Thirteen Women” by Bill Haley and the Comets seen here:  Le Notti Bianche on YouTube (6:08).  This sets into play a deliciously romantic set of sequences where Mario confesses his love, where his heart literally opens up in such a delightfully natural fashion, where Mastroianni is nothing less than divine in the role.  As the snow begins to fall, so beautifully captured by cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, it’s as if their storybook lives have an enchanted touch of grace after all, adding a poetic layer of innocence to their lives, which is suddenly bright and new, reversing courses suddenly, evolving into sheer ecstasy and exaltation on the part of Natalia, who rushes off at the sight of her lost love waiting for her on the bridge, leaving Mario heartsick and utterly devastated, all but crushing his spirit, as if the air suddenly rushes out of his lungs, finding himself once again alone in the world, even more isolated than before.