The Cranes Are Flying
All actors and roles (10)
All team (18)
Short description
The Cranes Are Flying is a Soviet drama set in Moscow in the years around the Second World War. Veronika and Boris fall in love shortly before the fighting begins, and during a walk beside the river they watch a flock of cranes pass overhead and arrange to meet again before he leaves. Boris never reaches the meeting; he volunteers for the front, and Veronika is left to wait for word of him. When bombing destroys her home, she is taken in by Boris's family, where his relative Mark pursues her with intentions of his own.
Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov from a screenplay by Viktor Rozov, the film was his first credited feature in the chronological list of his work, followed by I Am Cuba in 1964. It stars Tatyana Samoylova as Veronika and Aleksey Batalov as Boris, with Vasili Merkuryev, Aleksandr Shvorin, Svetlana Kharitonova and Konstantin Kadochnikov among a credited cast of 48.
Released in 1957 by the Mosfilm studio, the 97-minute film carries an 8.3 rating from about 22,000 votes on IMDb and a 7.9 from roughly 473 votes on TMDB, while a critics' rating of 8.6 stands from 26 reviews, showing broad approval across both professional and general audiences.
What's left behind the scenes
- At the Cannes Film Festival, the film's title was translated into French as "When the Storks Fly"... The reason is that the original title, in French slang, means "prostitutes steal."
- During the filming, a young, unknown French film enthusiast worked as a camera assistant for two days. He had arrived in Moscow with a tour group and accidentally ended up at the Mosfilm studio. He later became a famous film director. His name is Claude Lelouch.
- The film's triumph at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival was reported with restraint in the USSR. A nameless article with no photographs in 'Izvestia' did not mention either the director or the film's screenwriter.
- To film the scene of Boris's death, Sergei Urusevsky devised and first constructed circular camera rails.
- During the filming of the scene where Veronika runs up the stairs in the bombed-out house of her parents, Tatyana Samoylova, who was suffering from tuberculosis, fainted.
- The film is based on the play "Ever Living" by Viktor Rozov.
- The working title of the film was "For Your Life."
- Veronika was originally going to be played by Elena Dobronravova. Mikhail Kalatozov's assistant saw Tatyana Samoylova in the film "The Mexican," after which he recommended her to cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky, who then suggested her to director Kalatozov.
- Nikita Khrushchev angrily criticized the film after watching it, calling the main character a 'whore'.
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