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Letter Never Sent: The Criterion Collection
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Criterion Collection Review written by and copyright: Noor Razzak (16th May 2012). |
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The Film
 I don't have much experience with Russian cinema, what little I've seen had been the essentials such as "The Battleship Potemkin" (1925), "The Cranes are Flying" (1957), or "Solaris" (1972) in fact that's about all the Russian cinema I've seen, so when "Letter Never Sent" arrived on my doorstep I was interested in seeing what else the then Soviet nation had to offer. The film introduces viewers to the premise fairly quickly in a dialogue-less sequence that spans the film's first 6 minutes as we meet the characters being dropped off in the Siberian wilderness, trudging their way through wet landscape and thick wilderness. The landscape is bleak and empty. The film's black and white photography captures the starkness of the surroundings well, it's a desperate land and these characters have to make the best out of a reasonably bad situation. Their mission - to survey the land for diamonds, previous expeditions came up short, with nothing to show for it. Sergei (Yevgeni Urbansky), Tanya (Tatyana Samojlova), Andrei (Vasili Livanov) and Sabinine (Innokenti Smoktunovsky) hope for the better. The "letter" referenced in the film's title is a letter being written meant for Vera (Galina Kozhakina) back home in Moscow and never having been able to finish it and mail it, instead the writing continues it while on the geological expedition. During the course of the expedition Sergei falls in love with Tanya, a young surveyor that is in love with Andrei. Sergei's starts writing his own letter and suddenly changes course and writes about his love for Tanya, and when Andrei accidentally sees a part of the letter, he assumes it's meant for someone else and gives Sergei some advice that perhaps its not appropriate to chase this woman as she already loves another... not knowing that the woman in question is Tanya. Tanya would discover this in a incredibly awkward scene where Sergei embarrasses himself. Secret loves and other issues are swept aside when Tanya discovers diamonds, the happy crew celebrate but their celebration turns to disaster as a raging forest fire erupts and the geologists have to run for their lives. There's an incredible sequence during a forest fire as Sergei tries to save the supplies, the camera follows in and around burning trees, the tracking shot is technically challenging but the results are incredible as audiences are thrust into the midst of the devastation. The film takes a while to get into the meat of the story, setting up the characters and their personalities, a full forty minutes goes by before the real drama starts, but when it does, it's a fight-for-life scenario. Our characters are pitted against the wild Siberian landscape that's on fire, low on supplies they have to make it a clearing so the rescue helicopters and planes can see them. But with all the smoke they have a hard time being visible to the rescuers. Director Mikhail Kalatozov and cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky keep the action close, with tight shots evoking a sense of claustrophobia, matched with skewed angles and camera techniques help create a tense and disturbing atmosphere. For a soviet film I expected some subversive communist angle pushed down our throats, so some hidden and very subtle anti-communist jab, but aside from the radio transmissions to the "fatherland" there wasn't any in this film. Probably a good thing, considering we can focus on the characters and the story instead of shoving some government message down people's throats. Story, characters and photography aside, I found that performances were a bit on the melodramatic side, almost like watching a late 1950's era soap-opera, character drama was relegated to the secret-love that Sergei had for Tanya and the other's hope to have a successful mission, cut between frantic digging and excavating... it takes a while to get used to but when the action really starts it truly grips you.
Video
Presented in the film's original theatrical ratio of 1.33:1 mastered in high definition 1080p 24/fps using AVC MPEG-4 compression. The film's transfer was created using the best elements currently available, the results are unfortunately mixed, with some shots looking nice and detailed while others are soft or hazy. The inconsistent result is not entirely the fault of Criterion, they did the best they could with the elements they had. In saying that I doubt the film would look any better than it currently does, so there's some silver lining to be had. The black and white contrast looks good, the image is mostly clean without any dirt and scratches which is great. Overall not the best but as good as we're likely to ever get.
Audio
A single Russian LPCM 1.0 mono track is included, the film's original audio track. Much like other Criterion titles of a certain age the soundtracks undergo a restoration and clean up, so what we get is an audio track free from drop outs, crackle, pops, hiss and other problems that plague films of this age. The dialogue turns out clear and clean as a result of the restoration. The film features a lot of exciting moments, a forest fire, trudging through the bleak landscape, a snap winter. The audio does a decent job of presenting these elements for its time but of course only being a single mono track is quite limited in range and depth. The front heavy track does the trick and will be satisfactory for purists. optional subtitles are included in English only.
Extras
This is one of the more disappointing packaged put together by The Criterion Collection, there aren't any video extras on this disc, I'm sure finding material for a 53 year-old Soviet film may be hard to track down, but at least get a Soviet film scholar to record an audio commentary? After all that's what Criterion are so great at, offering supplements with substance giving viewers a decent background on the film and its history, instead all we have is the requisite booklet that features an essay entitled "Refining Fire" by film scholar Dina Iordanova.
Overall
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