The Cranes Are Flying

Moscow, June 22, 1941, Veronika and her boyfriend Boris watch cranes fly over the city as the sun rises, then sneak back into their families’ apartments. Hours later, Boris’s cousin Mark wakes him with news. The Germans have invaded.

Veronika soon learns Boris volunteered for the army. Boris asks his grandmother to give Veronika her birthday gift, a stuffed squirrel toy ("squirrel" is Boris's pet name for Veronika), into which he slides a love note. Veronika arrives too late to see Boris at his apartment, but his grandmother gives Veronika the stuffed squirrel. Veronika searches for Boris at the assembly station, but misses finding him there too, as he marches off to war.

Veronika remains in Moscow with her parents, who are killed in a German air raid, which also destroys their apartment building. Boris's family invites the orphaned Veronika to stay with them.

Boris serves at the Front. He gets into an argument with another soldier, Volodya, who insults a photo of Veronika. Their commanding officer catches them fighting and assigns them a dangerous reconnaissance mission. Boris saves Volodya’s life, but Boris gets shot. In his final moments, he has a vision of the wedding he and Veronika never had.

Back in Moscow, Boris’s cousin Mark tells Veronika he loves her, but she faithfully waits for Boris. Veronika and Mark are alone in the apartment when another air raid occurs. Mark makes a pass at her. She rebuffs him. Furious at being rejected, he rapes her. Mark shames Veronika into marrying him. She despises him, but does not tell the family about the rape, thus they believe she betrayed Boris, who they all think is still alive.

To escape the German offensive, the family is relocated to Siberia. Veronika works as a nurse in a military hospital run by Boris's father Fyodor. Mark and Veronika are miserable in their marriage.

When a soldier in the hospital becomes hysterical upon receiving a letter saying his girlfriend left him, Veronika rushes to get Fyodor, who is processing arriving wounded troops. She barely misses seeing the injured Volodya, who is about to be admitted to the hospital, before Fyodor says the hospital is full. Fyodor admonishes the distraught soldier to forget his unfaithful girlfriend. Veronika overhears Fyodor’s speech and becomes upset, since she appears to be such a woman.

Overwhelmed with guilt, Veronika tries to throw herself in front of a train. Just before she attempts suicide, she sees a young boy about to be hit by a car and rescues him. The boy has been separated from his mother and his name is Boris. Veronika takes the boy home and looks for her squirrel toy from Boris. Boris’s sister Irina spitefully tells Veronika that Mark is giving the toy to his mistress, at her birthday party. Veronika races over to the party, where a partygoer has finally found the note Boris hid. Veronika grabs it, and Boris narrates this final tender love note to her.

Fyodor learns Mark bribed his way out of being drafted into the Red Army. Fyodor realizes Mark betrayed Russia and the family, and has taken advantage of Veronika. Fyodor kicks Mark out, and Veronika is forgiven by the family for "betraying" Boris. The boy Veronika saved becomes part of the family. Later, Volodya, having recovered, comes in search of Boris's family, and tells them Boris is dead.

In 1945, the war has ended and Veronika and Volodya stroll by the river back in Moscow. They are very close, but Veronika still refuses to believe Boris is dead, since Volodya was injured himself and never saw Boris die. When Boris’s unit returns, Veronika carries a huge bouquet of flowers, intending to give them to him, and hunts for him and his friend Stepan during a celebration at the train station. Veronika finds Stepan and finally learns Boris is indeed dead. Veronika stumbles in tears through the celebrating crowd. As Stepan gives a rousing speech, asserting that those who died in the war will never be forgotten, Veronika goes from grieving to handing out her flowers to the returning soldiers. When she looks up, cranes are flying again in the sky over Moscow.

As film scholar Josephine Woll observes, the protagonist Veronika was instrumental in shaping the post-Stalinist Soviet movies by heralding more complicated, multi-dimensional celluloid heroines, as well as focusing on the impact of war on common people. It was not only Soviet audiences that accepted and sympathized with Veronika‘s story. The lead actress of Cranes, the beautiful Tatiana Samoilova, who was frequently identified with her role, took Europe by storm. Following the film's victory at the Cannes Film Festival in 1958, where it earned the event‘s prestigious Grand Prize, the world celebrated the film‘s main protagonist, and critics hailed the production for its stunning cinematography, acting, direction, and editing. Woll notes that the French Liberation commentator, for example, approvingly contrasted Samoilova‘s purity and authenticity with that of Brigitte Bardot, a Western female icon.[3] 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."[4]

The illustrated PSE with the scenes from the film: A. Batalov as Boris, T. Samojlova as Veronika. Russia, 2003 г.

• Tatiana Samoilova as Veronika
• Aleksey Batalov as Boris
• Vasili Merkuryev as Fyodor Ivanovich
• Aleksandr Shvorin as Mark
• Svetlana Kharitonova as Irina
• Konstantin Nikitin as Volodya
• Valentin Zubkov as Stepan
• Antonina Bogdanova as Grandmother
• Boris Kokovkin as Tyernov
• Yekaterina Kupriyanova as Anna Mikhajlovna

• The Cranes Are Flying at AllMovie
• The Cranes Are Flying at IMDb
• The Cranes Are Flying on official Mosfilm channel on YouTube
• The Cranes Are Flying an essay by Chris Fujiwara at the Criterion Collection
• Comparison of different DVD editions (in Russian and English)