Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Veronika and Boris come together in Moscow shortly before World War II. Walking along the river, they watch cranes fly overhead, and promise to rendezvous before Boris leaves to fight. Boris misses the meeting and is off to the front lines, while Veronika waits patiently, sending letters faithfully. After her house is bombed, Veronika moves in with Boris' family, into the company of a cousin with his own intentions.
The Cranes Are Flying is a landmark of Soviet cinema, distinguished above all by Sergei Urusevsky's breathtaking, kinetic cinematography — swooping handheld tracking shots, expressionistic angles, and lyrical crane movements that were genuinely revolutionary for the era and remain stunning. Tatyana Samoylova's performance as Veronika is raw and emotionally complex, anchoring the film with remarkable presence. The plot, while affecting, follows a fairly conventional wartime melodrama structure — separation, betrayal, longing, and loss — without radical structural innovation, and the supporting characters are somewhat schematic. The ending, with its bittersweet crowd scene and release of flowers, is moving but somewhat conventional as a resolution. Novelty is solid but not exceptional: the film perfects and emotionally deepens an established genre rather than fundamentally reinventing it, though Urusevsky's visual language genuinely sets it apart.