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The story is as banal as it sounds, but Director Kalatozov has told it with smashing verve. He has obviously made the picture he wanted to make, relatively free of official interference, and the sense of freedom thrills in every frame. Kalatozov can seldom resist the brilliant angle and the trenchant frame, even when they interrupt the story, and his glorious effects of cutting and lighting are often spectacularly inappropriate. But somehow the vital extravagance of the film engages the spectator and whirls him along in its whirling mood. This mood is personified in Heroine Samoilova, an astonishingly imaginative young actress who is the type of Tolstoy's Natasha—slender, dark, expressive as a flame.
For all its various vitalities, The Cranes Are Flying probably matters less as a work of art than as a revelation of the modern Russian mood. It adds, for one thing, to the mass of evidence that the nation that leads the world in rocketry is still inspired by the romantic ideals of 19th century "servants' literature." The film also suggests that there has been some relaxation of the puritanical morality of the revolution: the heroine errs, but is forgiven at the fade. And there is even a mild suggestion that people in Russia sometimes get tired of the canned ideas they are continually fed—the party's production slogans and political cant ("Fascist beasts") come in for some sly kidding. So do the professional women, the emancipated amazons of Marxist society. But one Cranes does not make a summer.