The Cranes Are Flying

From 1957, it's set during World War II.

It is, and I wanna pronounce his name correctly, so give me a moment when I say unto you Mikhail Kalatozov's The Cranes Are Flying.

And I don't know what the spine number is on The Cranes Are Flying, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was, like, 22 or 23.

It's an ear- it's like a, it's, like, one of the early Criterion collection discs.

Like, number one I think is, um, [smacks lips] The Grand Illusion, right? And that's, like, you know-

... that's pretty early

... all right, it's pretty early.

So The Cranes Are Flying is a beautiful movie from the Soviet Union, a country that does not exist anymore.

Um, Mikhail Kalatozov is the director of Soy Cuba, or I Am Cuba, and he directs three films in a row famously.

The Cranes Are Flying, Letter Never Sent, and I Am Cuba.

He does other films, but these are the ones that he's most known for.

So I'm just gonna say a couple things about him, and if anybody wants to chime in, feel free, but then we will talk about, um, the, the film and the production.

Makes a film called Nail in the Boot, 1931, which angered the military and gets him banned from film production for seven years.

I believe he just went into accounting and did s- stayed in the industry working with economics and accounting until he could get back into the dir- director's chair.

Made a lot of social realist, uh, socialist realist films until his big breakout international hit, The Cranes Are Flying.

The, those three films I mentioned are all, uh, they all have the same cinematographer, Sergei Urusevsky, who is just an incredible cinematographer, and that's the first thing you'll notice with any of those films, that they are incredible looking films.