This is a totally excellent man vs. nature drama. An outstandingly dramatic soundtrack is coupled with some of the most powerful and unique visuals I've ever seen. If you thought Tarkovsky was a one-shot in the Soviet Union when it came to beautiful yet haunting images, you'll definitely think again after this movie. The characters and the story are perhaps not too well developed, but this somehow adds to the sense of not being totally in control, which is important here. It's nothing short of a tragedy that this movie is totally unknown; it would probably have been a candidate of reaching IMDb's top 50 if it were. Those looking for unknown classics should hunt this one down at all costs.
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zetes4 April 2012Mikhail Kalatazov is best known for 1957's The Cranes Are Flying and 1964's I Am Cuba. This is the film he made between those. It also contains cinematography by Sergei Urusevsky. That's its best aspect, for sure, and much like those other two films, it's a gorgeous piece of pure cinema. The story concerns four geologists (including The Cranes Are Flying's lead actress, Tatyana Samoilova) who have been dropped off in remote Siberia to search for diamonds. The initial plot concerns a love triangle between Samoilova and two of the men (while the third man writes the titular letter to his wife). Soon the melodramatic plot line falls to the wayside when the four are trapped in an enormous forest fire. It then becomes a desperate tale of survival. It's actually quite gripping, and the photography is so utterly stunning you can't help but be awestruck.
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Quinoa198422 February 2016One of the films that has received much acclaim recently has been The Revenant, which is about a trapper who is near-fatally injured, left for dead and literally crawls to survive in the harsh Canadian wilderness. Much as been made of how the filmmakers and cast got through the rough conditions and shot in natural light, but for me for all of its technical virtuosity there was some element of heart missing to it, meaning to be about something but about too many things (revenge, love, indigenous people, regret, being one with nature, etc) and/or there was so many virtuoso camera movements that it called attention to itself. I bring this up because decades ago in the Soviet Union, director Mikhail Kalatozov and Sergey Urusevskiy (cinematographer) crafted their own story of people in the middle of the unforgiving/indifferent wilderness, also with many, many moments (70% of the film, give or take a few percents) where the filmmakers went whole-hog for long takes without cuts in said tumultuous conditions. Yet this worked for me much more, despite a lack of bison and fish eaten live on screen and so on.
I don't want to spend the whole review comparing to Inarritu's film, but what I can say is that when you watch Kalatozov's Letter Never Sent, the focus is a little more narrow, so it doesn't go all over the place (it shouldn't have to really). It follows four Russians, three men and one woman, on an expedition in the Taiga (also see Herzog's Happy People for the documentary on this region, but I digress). They're searching for diamonds or precious stones of some sort, and spend weeks (maybe it's months) digging in the ground. They find what they're looking for - it's a very jubilant moment, the kind where Kalatozov and his DP follow Tanya and Sergei as they run through the woods with total excitement (and the camera follows so quickly as to seem like a new type of breathless cinematic expression). And then a gigantic fire breaks out one day when they awake and they have to all fend for their lives and find a way out.
As one small point against the movie, the acting is not exactly nuanced (there's no Tom Hardy here, to put it another way), though this is not to say that the performers are at all bad or sub-par. Maybe a few moments are played very big, or expressions of happiness or joy get turned on so fast that the director can barely keep up (or maybe he encouraged it, I don't know). But because it's these four characters only - plus one radio voice from the outside world, not a character but rather a spectral presence - and as their numbers dwindle over the course of the story it becomes even more intense with those alive, we have a point of focus, especially with the early scenes. So as much as I might try to nitpick the acting here and there, the actors do fully commit to *being* Tavya and Sergei.
One could criticize it for being so indulgent with its movements, but for me that's what made it stand out as such a gorgeous piece of work. It's poetic in how it charts movement on screen, how figures trace along the edge of a landscape, often in darkness or silhouette, against a backdrop of fire and smoke, or the rays of the harsh Siberian sun and clouds. Not all shots necessarily last 4/5 minutes either, and some are wonderful just for staying on faces; when Tanya and Sergei are having one of their few rests, and they recall a pioneer song from their youth, it's real heartache and nostalgia fused together, and the close-ups cut from one face to the other like it's as natural as anything you've ever seen. But when tension has to rise again, the filmmakers know just how to make things reveal themselves in a way that doesn't feel forced, somehow.
If you've seen the director's previous films like I Am Cuba or The Cranes are Flying, you may know what you're in for. If you just happen to pick it up off the shelf knowing nothing about it, Letter Never Sent still triumphs as a work of art - a story that digs deep into the human condition, not simply that to try and survive a situation (though of course there is that, constantly), but also to keep love and hope alive, and what happens when love is found and lost while another's lost story is going on (Tanya and Sergei have this, and it's heartbreaking to watch unfold). Throughout their struggles in the majority of the film, the characters have a constant hope that they'll find somebody, unless, as one character does do, it's time to give up, and I couldn't help but feel like there was a complex set of emotions going on. It's not simply about charting a story of human beings pushed to their absolute limits of durability, or watching them suffer for art (like another film I could think of, it was hard not to at times during this).
The direction is sophisticated, challenging, daring, and altogether different from what we get in most movies from any era, and yet through all of its visual flourishes - and there are many shots that, you know, you could hang up on a wall to show as still-image photography of the highest artistic sensibility - it's not really too pretentious. Another thing as well is that it's one of the only Russian films from the era, at least on first thought, that have no real politics to it. Letter Never Sent is brutal but also beautiful cinema from master craftsmen and (semi) talented Russians. -
wheeler-benjamin11 August 2007Saw this at Tribeca Film Festival in Spring 2007, and was absolutely floored. I walked out of the theater afterword amazed at what I'd seen and thrilled that such an amazing film existed and had been maintained by a tiny number of appreciators in such excellent quality for so long.
The story is not the strong point of the movie. Rather, as with Terence Malick films, the story is just a starting point for the film, which is another beast entirely. What shines and carries the film from scene to scene is the cinematography. I didn't know if this was happened elsewhere at the time, but I didn't expect to see hand-held camera work in a 1959 Russian film, let alone the kind of early spinning, impossibly-filmed shot that appears early in the film. Later, there is a sequence that makes me long to know how they created the opportunity to film in such conditions.
If you've read this far, you must track down this movie. My understanding is that Francis Coppola has a California archive maintain the only copy in the Americas, and that it's usually shown just one a year. -
oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx17 December 2011The naming of the film as The Unsent Letter seems a little bit mystifying, in that it suggests that the whole film is about the letter, whereas that's something of an under-developed tangent.
The story concerns four Soviet geologists, prospecting for diamonds in remote Siberia. Gentle and committed Marxist-Leninist folk, they are all in love, Tanya and Andrey with each other, Sabinine with the wife he left behind (Vera), and Sergey is left with the thorns of the rose, in unrequited love with Tanya (oh no!). The idea of the expedition is that a source of domestic sparklers will lead to the betterment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, perhaps even a new industrial revolution, releasing them from a reliance on foreign capitalists.
The popular wisdom of today (social Darwinism) has it that communism failed because humans are essentially selfish, human nature is competitive, families are nepotistic. Ideas about human nature being essentially negative were around before the establishment and subsequent collapse of any nations along principles looking something like Karl Marx's. The classic counterargument was made by Prince Kropotkin, (who himself led geological expeditions in Siberia) suggesting that human competitive behaviour was actually a marginal characteristic that capitalism had harnessed and brought front and centre, in aid of which he cited various anthropological cases, which pointed to the pre-eminence of the spirit of co-operation over the spirit of competition.
Why the history lesson? Well the folks in the movie were living under a different ideology, it was a hopeful ideology, where the spirit of co-operation was seen as an ideal. There were a class of people, represented in this film, who genuinely thrived under Marxist-Leninism (I do not deny the existence of nasties such as Joe Stalin and Beria and their havoc and undermining of Marxist-Leninist principles). It's critical that the way the characters think is understood, and is seen as realistic, for the film to sink in on any other than an aesthetic level (it is one of the most gorgeous movies ever made).
Kalatosov was a hardcore ideologue, an earlier film of his, Nail In The Boot, is hysterically Stalinist / Robespierre-ian. He's toned that down here, although he clearly sees the state as some sort of greater, potentially immortal entity in comparison to the individual. He really did feel that people could pull together in the same direction, for something bigger than themselves, it's simply not just propaganda for him to represent the many people who felt like that.
The reluctance to buy foreign diamonds is interesting because it's only superficially xenophobic, it's not like say, Americans not wanting to buy a foreign car. The Soviets believed that capitalist modes of production and wealth sharing were immoral, so buying South African diamonds was something inherently immoral for them, rather than about protectionism.
On a personal level I found Sergei Stepanovich's story very moving to me, I can't think where I've seen a character like this before. He's in love with someone who's already in a love story, he's jealous, but not ashamed about it. He's never felt that he loves anyone before and he's getting past the age where love stories typically happen, but he's too honourable to do anything dastardly about it to anyone but himself, wandering off into a metaphorical fire of desire. I've gone through the exact same experience, it's so rare to actually feel like a film-makers has have fashioned a character that I can identify with.
I mentioned that The Unsent Letter is one of the masterpieces of cinematography but the editing is brilliant too. I was staggered by one edit in particular, where the face of Vera is overlaid onto Sabinine's face, and they share one eye. I just felt, "What a perfect way to show that their souls had joined!". Kalatosov at heart seems to have been a bit of a romantic, and liked working in overpowering love stories into his work, for example in The Red Tent. -
chaos-rampant19 February 2009Loss, purpose, and redemption, all in this harrowing adventure and visual tour-de-force by usual suspects Kalatozov/ Urusevsky.
An expedition of diamond hunters is dropped in the Siberian plateau with the mission of discovering a rumoured diamond vein. In the course of the movie diamonds acquire a further symbolic aspect as the purpose in life. As the expedition is befallen by a raging fire and forced to make a hazardous escape through burning logs, saving the map which points to the location of the much sought-after diamonds becomes a struggle to preserve purpose and meaning in a world that defies it. As the surviving members of the expedition stagger through the charred landscape, amidst billows of smoke and torrents of rain, nothing there to answer their pleas and curses but the echo of their voices, the world seems indifferent to their plight.
The star of the movie however is Urusevsky's cinematography. Kalatozov fails to harness his tremendous visual talent as he did in THE CRANES ARE FLYING, certain scenes flailing for attention but lacking the dramatic pull to justify them, but still someone who likes movies for their pictorial quality, for the endless possibilities of capturing images with a photographic lens and moving inside a thridimensional canvas; such a person will be left in awe and admiration of what Urusevsky achieves. His rapid tracking shots through branches of trees, as though the nature conspires to ensnare the protagonists, the amazing clarity of the closeups, the maize of hand-held shots thrusting the viewer right there in the middle of the action, the beautiful dutch angles transforming the geography of the landscape into something that can only exist for and by the camera.
Although the plot has its heart in the right place, much like its predecessor, it suffers from being too overwrought and from lapsing into moments of melodrama. Plot threads that are emphasized early on, like Sergei's unrequisite love and the growing tension with Tanya, are never really resolved and come to a screeching halt when the fire erupts. Traditional Soviet values, like the leader's dream of a Diamond City and the portrayal of civilization as a collective good, don't chime with my sensibilities. The score is often jarring and obtrusive but that's 50's cinema for you.
Overall this is a visually marvellous film aimed at the cinephiles who can appreciate such things. -
lee_eisenberg27 December 2015Having just directed the WWII-themed masterpiece "The Cranes Are Flying", Mikhail Kalatozov directed "Neotpravlennoye pismo" ("Letter Never Sent" in English), a look at the will to survive in desperate circumstances. A group of geologists collecting diamonds in Siberia have to fend for themselves when a forest fire cuts them off from their supplies. Their cooperation was probably meant to reflect Soviet values.
I interpreted the final few minutes of the movie as a reflection of the man's desperation (he wanted there to be something). But however you interpret it, this has to be one of the most intense movies that I've seen. And I highly recommend it. -
Andy-29621 October 2007This relatively unknown 1959 movie from Soviet director Mikhail Kalatozov is a great adventure film. A guide and three geologists go to the virgin forests of Central Siberia in order to find diamonds. The geologists include Sabinin, the older leader, the young, nerdy Andrei and the pretty Tania, who is Andrei's fiancé. Soon, the guide will start having strong feelings toward Tania (the movie seems to imply you should never include a beautiful woman in an otherwise all-male expedition). Diamonds will be eventually found, but before they can return to civilization, the team will be engulfed by a vast forest fire, and they will die one by one. This film may be nothing more than a paean to muscular Soviet man (and woman), but it is very well done. The black and white photography is astonishing; there is a particular scene of the young couple running through the forest at high speed that is extremely beautiful; at times, the scenes are so realistic one wonders how they did this (did they actually put the actors next to a real forest fire?)
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mithilbhoras-103-5812963 March 2013In Mikhail Kalatozov's Letter Never Sent, four geologists are searching for diamonds in the wilderness of Siberia. Three men, one woman. Andrei and Tanya are in love. Sergei is in love with Tanya. Sergei is a strong man who had been on such expeditions but had returned with no luck. He is jealous of the nerdy Andrei's and the beautiful Tanya's relationship but never cares to hide that feeling. Sabinine (The Leader of the expedition) often spends his free time writing letters, which he will never send, to the woman he once loved. This is how the film begins: By presenting a set of characters, each having different perspectives but are present in the wild forests of Siberia for one reason. With the hope of serving their country, they are present there hunting for a diamond vein. It's no surprise that the diamond deposit is discovered in the film after days of hard work. Previous expeditions had failed but this one expedition proved that there indeed was a diamond deposit in Siberia. Soon, the four geologists, filled with zeal and satisfaction, find themselves engulfed by a huge forest fire and completely cut of from the civilized world. Will they survive?
Before the opening credits, the film pays tribute to the people of the Soviet Union who have given their lives for the benefit of the country, whether it be astronauts seeking answers for the mysteries of space or geologists going in to the wilderness hunting for diamonds. Throughout the entire film, we see the characters suffering in the piercing cold and bleak atmosphere of Siberia. Their goal at this point is to safely deliver the map, on which the whereabouts of the diamond deposit is marked, to Moscow. We see sacrifice. We witness loss. We witness alienation, hunger, despair. This is where I realized that similar to numerous Soviet films, Letter Never Sent contains shards of Propaganda. Adventure? Nope. I look at this one as a miserable survival film filled with some unnecessary moments of melodrama, patriotism and hyperactivity. The fact is that I don't mind patriotism and propaganda. But in this case it's overdone. I just didn't care for any of the characters. Not even the gorgeous Tatiana Somailova whose performance in the 1957 Soviet Classic The Cranes are Flying (Also directed by Mikhail Kalatozov) was spellbinding. It was because of this film that I was intrigued to check out Letter Never Sent.
Now the big question: What relation does the film and it's title have? As stated earlier, Sabinine wrote letters to a woman he loved from his past. He wrote them, feeling nostalgic, without the intention of sending them (Of course, the team is already in the middle of nowhere). This relation is explained further in the final moments of the film but it's significance is again directed more towards patriotism, in my opinion. Another disappointing aspect.
Unlike the ingenious masterpiece The Cranes are Flying, this film lacks true emotions. I went in with high hopes of seeing another Soviet masterpiece but eventually I was left disappointed. Albeit this film failed to emotionally engross me, Sergei Urusevsky's miraculous cinematography makes the film worth watching. Urusevsky and Kalatozov have collaborated in multiple films and their most well known work is of course The Cranes are Flying, where the film used astonishing camera- work. Though I believe Letter Never Sent takes it to a whole new level by composing unbelievable images. The camera work is well ahead of it's time. It looked like that the camera glided through the wild fire and the horrible blizzards very smoothly. The technical artistry of this film deserves a standing ovation and at times it completely overpowers the dissatisfying screenplay.
On the positive side, Letter Never Sent is one of the strongest proofs of how visually powerful cinema can be. If you ever tell me to compile a top 10 list of the most visually stunning films ever crafted, this one will gladly make it to the top 5. Mr. Urusevsky, you rock. (And I will highly recommend The Cranes are Flying in case you haven't seen it yet).
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Baceseras13 August 2013A parable intended to glorify self-sacrifice in the cause of building the earthly paradise promised by Communism. The geologist hero has proved by theory that immense diamond reserves must lie under a region of barren wilderness - where no trace of the minerals have ever actually been seen. The spectacular hardships he and his companions undergo are supposed to secure well, more toil and hardship - but then, in some distant future which no one now living will see, the people will be prosperous and happy.
The film conceives happiness and prosperity to be one and the same, the simple working out of a material process, and applies the visual rhetoric of sacred art to materialism. Quite effectively applies it: the explorers are Soviet "New Men" (and one woman), and they bubble with enthusiasm for the Radiant Future; while the landscapes are gorgeously stark, a suitable backdrop for sainthood. (The manly tracker who guides the group is so avid for inhospitable spaces he appears demonic even before the plot requires it.) But the striking look of the film and the thrilling dangers can barely conceal a vein of tawdry sentimentality. It will seem convincing to those who are predisposed to be convinced. -
mjneu591 December 2010This robust survival adventure follows a team of Soviet geologists stranded in the wilderness of Siberia after a forest fire severs their communication link with civilization. The opening dedication to Socialist heroes everywhere and the noble sacrifices made by each character carry the story dangerously close to propaganda, but the intensity of their ordeal (through smoke and fire, over snow and ice, across mountains and tundra) thankfully overwhelms the political simplicity of the script. Unfortunately, it also overwhelms the initial hints of tension between each of the four characters (three male, one female) after the struggle to survive becomes paramount. The sense of isolation and exposure is numbing; the film was directed with a strong sense of visual drama (including more than one knockout montage), showing everything an audience would ever want to know about being lost in Siberia.
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hte-trasme11 September 2014"The Unsent Letter" begins with a simple and powerful concept; we are introduced to a letter being written, and we know from the title that it remains unsent. And this contributes to a sense of doom and danger (and contrasting human hope) that characterizes the film.
This film is in large part a combination of large successes in the areas of character drama and cinematography, appropriately as the setting is so vital. It's the wide-open wooded Siberian Taiga in summer with the ticking time-bomb of a Siberian winter looming unspoken. In a context like this, the isolation of place can make it a place for a bottle drama. Here the friction and attraction between the characters is intensified against the mortal danger that is its background.
In terms of direction, there is no shying away from the lingering shot, hanging on the difficulty of a passage or on the face of a character -- and this is very effective. The acting is first rate; I had known Vasili Livanov only as Sherlock Holmes, and it is great to seem him do full justice to a very dramatic role.
The cinematography, though, is what is really extraordinary. There are some incredible shots moving around burning forest fires and huge icy landscapes that seem like they should have been impossible to achieve. In the end, one feels like one has gone through some of the ordeal of the characters. And one is tempted to imagine that making the film might have been a dangerous mission for the filmmakers on the order of what the characters encountered. -
gbill-7487728 January 2022Stunning cinematography in the Siberian taiga is the highlight here, with scenes like the dramatic/scary forest fire and ice floe accentuated by artistic camera work, including some nifty handheld shots. It's a survival story, one in which a quartet of explorers go out into the rugged wilderness in the hopes of finding diamonds to help the technological advancement of the Soviet state, but find themselves imperiled by the merciless forces of nature. Director Mikhail Kalatozov and cinematographer Sergey Urusevsky made a beautiful film here, one that for the visuals alone made it well worth seeing.
Where the film fell a little short for me was in how forced a couple of its aspects were. The first was the romantic angles, with Tatiana Samoilova and Vasily Livanov playing the two geologists on the mission who are also in love. While that could have added depth to the story and I would watch Samoilova in pretty much anything, the dialogue seemed so inauthentic that it pulled me out of feeling any kind of emotion for the two, or the tension of jealousy from a third man, played by Yevgeni Urbansky. I felt the same way about the titular framing for the story, a letter being composed by the guide (Innokenty Smoktunovsky).
The second aspect that took away from the experience was how heavy-handed the allegory was, with the clear message of perseverance, courage, and sacrifice for the greater good of the Fatherland. This was a story that needed gritty realism in every respect; we get it from the natural elements, but not always with the people, which was unfortunate. Had it been otherwise, this would have been a masterpiece. -
Welcome to Siberia, circa 1959 (in perfectly restored, glorious Black and White).
Although this story revolves around four 'pioneers' dropped into a vast wilderness to search for a rumored vein of diamonds (aka 'the Diamond Pipe'), the real star of the movie is cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky ("Soy Cuba," "The Cranes Are Flying").
Urusevsky is master of composition, dolly shots, and hand-held photography (when necessary). The way he frames his close-ups of the actors practically allows the audience to see into their souls.
Of course, it helps that he's shooting a top-notch Russian cast, including actress Tatyana Samojlova ("The Cranes Are Flying") whose character 'Tanya' is desperate to survive the troubling events that befall the group. Tanya is also the lone female and commands the attentions of two men in the rock-sampling group (though one is unrequited).
In addition, the visual elements are underscored aurally by composer Nikolai Kryukov's ("The Forty-first") evocative score, although he does amp up the music a bit too much in a couple of scenes. Not unusual for the time period, so set your appreciation meter back to the 50's and you won't be as bothered as I was.
The title of the film refers to not one but two letters that figure into the plot. One is a long, personal letter that is referred to in voice-over from time to time throughout the film, while the other is a love letter thought to be hidden away until it accidentally comes to light.
The plot is very straightforward so I won't spoil any surprises by detailing it here, suffice to say that the main attractions of this film are the artistic cinematography, the strong cast, and the director's choice to foreshadow plot elements by overlaying fiery images over his hardcharging trekkers.
If you've never seen any films by director Mikhail Kalatozov ("The Red Tent," "Soy Cuba," "The Cranes Are Flying"), then this one is probably as accessible as any and with a new restoration to boot, practically a MUST-SEE.
The ending alone is worth the price of admission, so check it out festival goers. -
karmaswimswami29 November 2014Among a panoply of scintillating things about this film is Sergei Urusevsky's deft black-and-white cinematography, much of it hand-held. Urusevsky seems to understand semiotics deeply, and his shots are often protean, shifting angle or perspective during a take to wring extra emotional import from it. I found myself rewinding many sequences and rewatching because of how well Urusevky, arguably the greatest Soviet era lensman, can minimally change vantage or tilt and bring fresh meaning cascading from the actors.
"Letter Never Sent" has communistic political messages in it, but is sumptuously acted by a small cast with a good sense of ensemble. Heat and cold, fire and ice, land and water, remote wildness and safe civilization all exist here in dynamic tension. The version in digital circulation is lovingly restored. A must-watch, especially for admirers of other quintessential Russian filmmakers such as Tarkovsy. -
konstantinkliushkin12 May 2020The fate of the film otherwise, as difficult, can not be called. The film was nominated for the Palm d'Or of the Cannes Film Festival in 1960 and was scheduled to be shown on May 17th. However, literally on the eve of presentation the application for the film in the competition program of the film festival was withdrawn. Although, as we all know, all countries, all film companies and all directors, not to mention actors, are passionately interested in participating in international film festivals. Moreover, such prestigious as Cannes. There are two versions of the explanation of the reasons for such an emergency withdrawal of the application. According to the official, the director of the film, Mikhail Kalatozov, suddenly wanted to fix something in the film, so that by the premiere in the USSR, scheduled for June 27, the film would not have a single flaw. According to the second, unofficial version, the application was withdrawn by the leaders of the USSR State Committee for Cinematography, who suddenly realized that the film shows how the means for socialist industrialization (in the film - diamonds) are sought at the cost of human lives (in the film - of geologists). For me personally, the second version seems to be more plausible. And that's why. The film is brilliant! Filmed by director Kalatozov and cameraman Sergei Urusevsky, both are triumphants of the Cannes Film Festival in 1958 for the film "The Cranes Are Flying." Top actors of the then Soviet cinema play in the film: Innokenty Smoktunovsky, Yevgeny Urbansky and incomparable Tatyana Samoilova. The high class of the picture also underlines the fact that literally the next year the film was released on European screens, and a year later - on the screens of US cinemas. But I don't remember whether this film was shown in the USSR in the 1960s - 1970s. However, human memory is an unreliable tool. Therefore, I turned to Kinopoisk for information on the number of viewers who watched this film in its first year. No such information! About the films that were released on the screens in the same years, for example, "The Ballad of a Soldier," there is such data. About earlier films, for example, "The Cranes Are Flying" or "True Friends", etc., there is such information. And about the "Letter Never Sent" - no! What can it say? Either the film was taken off the screen immediately after the premiere, or released in such a limited number of copies that it cites data on the viewing of a Soviet film in the Soviet Union by the number of viewers smaller than, say, in France, to put it mildly, uncomfortable. This is why data is absent. And no more any nomination for any film festival. Although it would seem that the premiere took place, it means that the director eliminated all the flaws. Why not to nominate? Especially since Tatyana Samoilova, after "The Cranes Are Flying," was in world cinema a star of the first brightness. After the premiere of this film in New York, The New York Times responded - a rare case! - quite a benevolent review, however, without attribution. So, we can assume that this review reflects the opinion of the entire editorial board of the newspaper. Of course, a significant part of the review was dedicated to our great Actress Tatyana Samoilova. But the film itself was addressed very flattering epithets: "FOR sheer photographic pull and intensity, "The Letter That Was Never Sent" is unlike any other Russian film drama in many years, ...a truly rare movie, stark in content and setting, pretentious and obscure at times, but of a marvelous pictorial texture. See this unorthodox Russian movie, hold on (like the determined cast) and we guarantee it will get you." And therefore it is not at all surprising that Francis Ford Coppola in 1995 funded the restoration and re-rental of this painting in the United States. Perhaps this is due to the fact that of all countries, this film has the highest rating in the United States. Overall, 64% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users around the world gave this film a rating of 8 to 10. Based on the foregoing, the rating of the film according to the FilmGourmand's version is 7.826. And this low rating is due primarily to the fact that the Soviet leadership at one time prevented the participation of the film in any film festivals and narrowed the scope of the film to the maximum extent possible in cinemas. But, nevertheless, the film is included in the FilmGourmand's Golden Thousand with Rank 947.
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punishmentpark6 September 2015Somebody (elsewhere on the net) pointed out that a forest fire makes so much noise that anyone would be woken up by it, and that must be true. Also, a fire, as big as it is here, would have to be a miraculous one if it would exactly spare a few tents and a small path through to the forest, wouldn't it?
The characters themselves don't appear too credible to me, either. They are a bunch of tough but jolly Soviet workers, searching for great riches for their wonderful (communist) state. I read a review here on IMDb, explaining their state of mind, but, as sincere as the intentions (of the characters) may be, it didn't catch on with me. The acting is also a bit over the top here and there, as could be expected, though the actors are not completely unsympathetic.
Then, finally, there's the amazing and beautiful cinematography of an expedition that starts out hopeful, but changes overnight into a nightmare (although the many shots of a campfire fading in and out was a fair omen). It makes the shortcomings of the film very well worth enduring.
A good 7 out of 10 seems a fair compromise. -
gavin694230 June 2016The film is based on the eponymous book by Valery Osipov. Four geologists are searching for diamonds in the wilderness of Siberia. After a long and tiresome journey they manage to find their luck and put the diamond mine on the map. The map must be delivered back to Moscow. But on the day of their departure a terrible forest fire wreaks havoc, and the geologists get trapped in the woods.
Professor Dina Iordanova calls the film "a remarkable depiction of perseverance in the face of extreme challenge, a tale of humankind's resolute dedication to the task of conquering the wild and overpowering the hostile forces of nature." This really is a beautiful film, both about struggle, but also very much quite artful. Russian cinema may not be very well known due to the Cold War, but what is known is probably best summed up in the work of Eisenstein. And that is selling Russia short. Even adding Tarkovsky would be selling it short. Throw this in (alongside "Cranes are Flying" and "I Am Cuba") and you have a well-rounded picture. -
Aw-komon18 February 2001A quite ridiculous film about diamond hunters in Siberia by the extraordinary director/cinematographer team of "I Am Cuba" and "The Cranes Are Flying." Needless say, the camerawork in the bizarrely surreal and barren Siberian locations is UNBELIEVABLE (the continuous takes are longer than any other film in history except for "I Am Cuba") but the film itself is too directly tied to dramatic 'adventure story' conventions to transcend into pure poetry like "Cranes" and "Cuba." There is a spectacular scene shot with the main actors amidst a raging forest fire and another one shot during an ice-storm. Most definitely worth transferring to DVD (there isn't a true film fan that wouldn't be flabergasted by the cinematography) but not by the same ones (Hen's Tooth) who did such a mediocre job on the transfer of "I Am Cuba."
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Lesser known film from Mikhail Kalatozov ("The cranes are flying" (1957) and "Soy Cuba" (1964)). Only since 2012 available on DVD.
Situated in the vastness of Siberia the film has something in common with "Dersu Uzala" (1975, Akira Kurosawa). In "Dersu Uzala" mother nature gives and takes. In "Letter never sent" she is only hostile, as if protecting her mineral resources (diamonds).
The images of the bushfire are spectacular and they form a pivotal point in the movie. Before the fire, he story is about the relationships between the members of the expedition. During and after the fire it is the expedition against the forces of nature. -
Mikhail Kalatozov has really been killing it for the past few weeks or so with me. With The Cranes Are Flying and now this film, I'm glad I got to watch a couple of his films for this thread. While I like The Cranes Are Flying a bit more (it sat well with me upon reflection), I also enjoyed this film quite a lot.
This is the kind of film where, instead of analyzing aspects and scenes which I liked, I prefer to say what I felt while watching it. This is in part because I was left in a state of amazement multiple times as I watched it given all the daring shots and set pieces Kalatozov put together. From actually lighting a forest on fire on multiple occasions, to navigating through all kinds of rough terrains, to floating down a fairly rapid, icy river on an unstable wooden raft, I imagine that the act of making this film was just as exciting as the film itself. I also loved the occasional dream-like sequences, such as Tanya and Andrei running to the group after they discovered the diamond mine, Konstantin and Tanya stuck in a thunderstorm, or Konstantin's hallucinations as he floated down a river. They gave the film an extra layer of style which I quite enjoyed. The film also packs quite a bit of suspense and dread into its fairly short runtime. Most of the character deaths were telegraphed ahead of time and were predictable, I suppose, but I wasn't bothered by that as this only made them more dreadful. I also loved the ending. I was convinced the film would have a tragic ending, but I was relieved that at least one of them made it out alive in the end.
My only issue with the film is that Kalatozov made some rather questionable narrative choices. The narrative starts out well by introducing and setting up the stage for a couple character dynamics in the first half hour, like Konstantin's romantic feelings for Tanya (which are complicated since she's already in a relationship with Andrei, another man on their expedition), or Konstantin's rather aggressive personality. Unfortunately though, these sub-plots were pretty much scrapped once the forest fire started and, save for a bit of subtext here and there, weren't explored again. Of course, I still found the final hour of the film compelling for the reasons listed above. I just found it unnecessary for the first half hour to establish these character conflicts given the way they culminated.
Regardless of my issues with the narrative though, I still found the film really enjoyable and, even though it gets off to a rough start, the final hour or so is wholly satisfying on a number of levels. -
Jeremy_Urquhart22 February 2023Unless a ton of this went over my head, it felt like a surprisingly simple drama/adventure film set almost entirely outdoors. Several geologists go looking for diamonds in the Siberian wilderness. Ultimately, for a handful of reasons, things don't go as planned.
It was less Heart of Darkness and more survival-focused, which I guess took me off guard. Things play out a little predictably, with the only moments that end up surprising being scenes that abruptly jump forward in time to show things suddenly drastically different. The pacing and editing felt a little strange to me, and almost like they were trying to add complexity to a simple survival story with clearly defined, fairly straightforward characters.
The movie excels when it comes to visuals. A good deal of the time, the things that feel off when it comes to editing and writing don't matter. The camera work and shot composition are consistently spectacular, making this an amazing movie to look at. If anything sucks you in, it's how it looks (and I think the performances are quite good too; they probably help).
It's a flawed film which I don't think adds up to the director's previous film, the similarly great-looking The Cranes Are Flying (1957), but it's still solid. It holds up fairly decently in most areas, and truly excels when it comes to visuals, which feels like enough when it looks this good. -
MogwaiMovieReviews11 February 2021Russian geologists find diamonds in Siberia but are left stranded in the wilderness.
The story seemed to me very slight and the pacing is slow, but it's well-acted and the black and white images are miraculously good, seemingly composed of liquid silver. The Soviet cinematography around this time was the best in the world perhaps ever, so see it if you are ever in the mood for some of that.