Customer Reviews

Lady with the Dog

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm truly happy that good quality Russian movies (and in this case classic Russian literature as well) are becoming available outside of Russia and finding their admirers among foreign viewers. I feel obliged however to correct a couple of mistakes made in the previous review. The actress starring in "The Lady with the Dog" is Iya Savina, not Tatiana Samojlova. The latter plays Veronika in "The Cranes are Flying". Alexej Batalov is in both movies, right, but in "The Cranes..." his character Boris never gets to become Veronika's husband, he is her true love and a husband-to-be, but she marries another man. I just wish the reviewer had been more careful with the information he gave cause such slips can really spoil a review as they kind of did for me. The movie remains good though. It deserves more than just two 5-star reviews, see it!

This film is one of Anton Chekov's most famous short stories. People think of Chekov as a play writer, certainly one of the world's greatest. However, he also wrote around 500 short stories, many of which are masterpieces of craft and tale.

Few films capture Chekov's quiet undercurrent of stasis and sadness as this one. It is paced, mannered, and theatrical in its presentation of character and dialogue. The photography is stunning and the acting magnificent. It is very faithful to Chekov's examination of two already married but very lonely people who discover each other at a Black Sea resort and fatefully fall in love.

Because of the times, conventions of society and morals, etc., these two simply cannot walk away from their marriages without public shame or economic disaster. Thus, they are trapped forever to see each other on the sly, for a few days here and there, and not much else. Total agony for two who truly deserve each other and nothing else. The simplicity of the tale is deceiving, for it is a timeless story that any age would understand.

Tatiana Samoilova, the great Russian actress, appears here, young and lovely, in her first film. Handsome Alexei Batalov, the husband in Mikhail Kalatozov's marvelous but heartbreaking 'The Cranes Are Flying', is the verile but resigned lover. A wonderful pairing.

i was lucky enough to catch this film in the late 70s, wandering around by myself as a lonely student one day in switzerland, and looking for a rainy day matinee. i've never forgotten this perfect little film, in all these years, and only thru amazon have finally found it again. i'm now waiting for it to come in the mail but couldn't wait to write the review! what i remember clearly about it is feeling it was the only time i've seen chekhov rendered perfectly in another medium. there on the screen, with no fanfare, was all the sweetness and delicacy and heartbreakingness and charm and stupidity and passion and banality and mystery of life, all of it there so simply in evidence on the screen. one of his best short stories, one of the great black-and-white classics of russian cinema. bravo to all involved and thank you, amazon, for this long-sought prize.

This is a sublime film. It looks without pretense beneath the surface of life, in fact deeper than the main characters themselves are prepared to go. The actors and the settings are perfect, and the music is haunting. Unusually it is equal to the story on which it's based, and neither surpasses nor is less than the original Chehkov story--except visually. For instance, the last image is unforgettable, recalling the last image, also at a window, of Huston's 'The Dead', and another, not at a window but similar in nature, of Judy Davis at the end of David Lean's 'Passage to India'.