Synopsis

As the clouds of war spread over Russia during Germany's surprise invasion in 1941, the fervent young lovers, the sensitive Veronika and the stalwart Boris, are parted when the patriotic lad secretly volunteers for the war effort. During the following hard years, Veronika who serves her country as a wartime-nurse will lose communication with Boris, moreover, when a devastating air raid destroys her house and Boris' father takes her in to live with the family, unexpectedly, things will take a turn for the worse. Before long, the worried fiancée will find herself dealing not only with the dark thoughts of Boris' potential loss but also with the burden of an unwelcome decision. Once, the star-crossed lovers swore eternal devotion under a flock of flying cranes, still, a war is always cruel and eternally disastrous.

Production Budget Analysis

The production budget for The Cranes Are Flying (1957) has not been publicly disclosed.

CAST: Tatyana Samoylova, Aleksey Batalov, Vasili Merkuryev, Aleksandr Shvorin, Svetlana Kharitonova, Konstantin Kadochnikov DIRECTOR: Mikhail Kalatozov CINEMATOGRAPHY: Sergei Urusevsky MUSIC: Mieczysław Weinberg PRODUCTION: Mosfilm

Box Office Performance

Theatrical box office data is not publicly available for The Cranes Are Flying (1957). This may indicate a limited release, direct-to-streaming, or a release predating modern box office tracking.

Profitability Assessment

Insufficient publicly available data to assess profitability.

INDUSTRY IMPACT

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Summary: Nominated for 2 BAFTA 4 wins & 3 nominations total

Awards Won: ★ Palme d'Or

CRITICAL RECEPTION

As the film scholar Josephine Woll observes, the protagonist Veronika was instrumental in shaping post-Stalin Soviet movies by heralding more complicated multi-dimensional celluloid heroines and focusing on the impact of war on common people. It was not only Soviet audiences that accepted and sympathised with Veronika's story. The lead actress of Cranes, Tatiana Samoilova, who was frequently identified with her role, took Europe by storm. Woll notes that the French Liberation commentator, for example, approvingly contrasted Samoilova's purity and authenticity with that of Brigitte Bardot, a French female icon. Samoilova remembered receiving a watch from her East German fans during a festival there. The gift featured the inscription: "Finally we see on the Soviet screen a face, not a mask". In his autobiography, he lists the film in his “cinema pantheon”, alongside Citizen Kane and Napoléon.