Now I realize that something essential has been missing in my life. Melodramatic films from the glorious days of Mosfilm & Lenfilm! Soviet grandeur! But The lady with the dog , directed by Iosif Kheifits is, of course, based on Chekchov's short story, in which the events take place towards the end of the 19th century. I like Chechov. (What I don't like is the problem of translating cyrillic letters into latin ones: there are different ways of doing it in different languages, and something always goes wrong.) There is not much to say about the story. Moscow banker, Gurov, meets a nice lady on Yalta. They have a thing. They are married. She returns to Petersburg, he returns to Moscow. In Moscow, Gurov's days pass by in the spirit of doom & gloom. He drinks with his mates. He sings sad songs. And he thinks about the girl.
So, what is fun about this movie? The cheese! (studio?) settings turn the beautiful scenery of a romantic night by the sea into something that feels very unreal, the filmic medium being apparent to the extent that it made me laugh. Strangely, there are a few beautiful scenes, too, that have qualities other than cheese-factor. Silence. Frozen landscapes. Crowds. Drunken parties. The cutting technique is great, too, rendering the film a nice rhytm. And there are tons of fun little things. In one scene, a paltry musician at some venue tries to entertain Gurov and his mate. "You could entertain people by grunting like a pig - oink, oink, oink" one of the gentlemen snarls, bogged deep in his unhappy state, buried deep in his vodka glass.
What surprised me about The lady with the dog was its lack of moralism. Well, maybe the standards of censorship were "lax" in 1960... Married people and monstrosities like that! These reactions, of course, give a hint about what I expect from soviet film.
(For some reason, IMDB recommends Brokeback mountain to viewers of this film. And, sure, there are some slight thematic connections there.)
Well, I really have to return to Chekchov now. And more soviet movies, please! I want to watch Moscow does not believe in tears!
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