Letter Never Sent (1959)
Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov

Film Review

Renowned Soviet filmmaker Mikhail Kalatozov followed up his internationally acclaimed masterpiece The Cranes are Flying (1957) with another cinematic tour de force, a gripping survival drama whose startling design and camerawork anticipate the director's most visually spectacular film, I Am Cuba (1964).  With its sparse tale of willing self-sacrifice for the good of the motherland, Letter Never Sent occasionally feels like a Soviet propaganda film of the 1920s, the kind that sanctified the hardworking proletariat and portrayed Communism as the nearest thing to Utopia.  But by giving well-defined identities to its characters and depicting their ordeal with such harrowing realism the film sets itself apart from propaganda films of the past and ends up being something that will strike a chord with everyone on Earth - an impassioned tribute to man's pioneering spirit and courage in the face of adversity.

With very little in the way of plot, it is the constant stream of jaw-dropping visuals that makes Letter Never Sent such a compelling and memorable cinematic experience. The work of Kalatozov's cinematographer Sergey Urusevsky on The Cranes are Flying seems positively tame compared with his wildly bravura contribution to its follow-up.  In Urusevsky's hands, the camera seems to take on a life of its own, swooping with the intoxicating grace of an eagle in some shots, waltzing with a dizzying frenzy in others, imbuing every scene with a heightened sense of drama which palpably evokes the emotional states of the protagonists as they repeatedly lurch between euphoria and despair.  Overlapping dissolves are used with mesmeric artistry in the scenes in which one character writes the titular letter to his beloved and then in the gripping sequence where the protagonists risk being burned alive in a forest fire.  Huge angled close-ups expose the tensions between the characters, suggesting that external dangers are not the only threats that have to be dealt with.  Lust, disloyalty and guilt will play a large part in deciding the fate of the protagonists.

Urusevsky's inspired use of the handheld camera in this and other films was years ahead of its time and brings a brutally realist edge to his art.  Complex tracking shots add further drama to the film, complementing Kalatozov's penchant for flamboyant melodrama to create an almost operatic sense of spectacle in the film's more dramatic moments.  The stylish shots of the doomed protagonists, seen in silhouette against the most Hellish of landscapes, have a beauty that is stark, terrifying and hauntingly poetic.  The conviction that the four main actors bring to their performances, playing their characters not as heroes or idealists but as ordinary young people trying to fend off death for as long as possible, adds to the film's nerve-racking power.

Throughout this grim ordeal that Kalatozov and Urusevsky paint with such fierce intensity and unwavering artistic brilliance, we are reminded how unutterably insignificant man is when set against the overwhelming might of Nature.  And yet, having plumbed the depths of despair in vistas of unimaginable ferocity (first a cauldron of fire, then a rain-sodden wilderness which becomes a never-ending snowy wasteland) the film miraculously ends with the candle of hope still burning.  Not even Nature in her foulest of moods has the power to crush the resilience of the human spirit.  Kalatozov would take us on a similar journey in his final film, The Red Tent (1969), but this is a pretty mild excursion compared with what Letter Never Sent has to offer.

Film Synopsis

A party of four young geologists undertake an expedition to the central plateau in Siberia in an arduous quest for diamond deposits.  Just when they are on the point of giving up, they succeed in finding diamonds but disaster quickly ensues.   Caught in a forest fire, one member of the party is killed and the others find themselves cut off from their boat and their precious supplies.  Their radio transmitter damaged beyond repair, they are unable to contact the outside world and ask for help.  What ensues is a nightmarish struggle to survive in the most hostile of environments, but survive they must if their efforts are not to have been in vain...