Hillsborough Classic Films presents "The Cranes are Flying" (1957; 90 minutes)

This is an important and award-winning Soviet film, one of the first after the heavy hand of Stalin's censorship was lifted, and it remains one of the best Russian films since WWII. A delicate love story, set against the great Russian tragedy that was World War II, it won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1958. In a 1960 review in the NYT, Bosley Crowther said: "[T]he warp and weft of "The Cranes Are Flying" ... are a downright obsessive and overpowering revulsion to war and, in contrast, a beautifully tender, almost lyric, feeling for romantic love. These two amazing expressions, so uncommon in Soviet films, which are more often given to extolling patriotic fervor and the lovable qualities of hydroelectric plants, are the particular thematic distinctions of this extraordinary prize-winning film."