The Cranes Are Flying

A couple in Moscow are separated when the war begins; he volunteers, and she cannot get to him to say goodbye. Having lost her family in a bombing, she takes shelter with his relatives. The film shows very little of the front; its weight rests on the woman waiting, and, unusually for Soviet cinema of the period, it does not make her faultless. The spiralling camera on the staircase and the scene in the bombed flat are cited as examples of a camera carrying feeling. Mikhail Kalatozov directed, with Sergei Urusevsky as cinematographer. It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Who it's for: those who like classics that tell a war from outside the front, and strong camerawork. Who it's not for: viewers expecting heroism; the film elevates nobody.