In the years following WWII, Soviet cinema stalled under the bureaucratic clench of the Stalinist government, which severely cut back on resources and favored sunny, propagandistic entertainment, with little but the most blandly heroic references to the war. After Stalin's death, one of the first filmmakers to emerge was Mikhail Kalatozov, his former head of production, a virtuoso technician who developed the "emotional camera"—his term for the elaborate handheld takes that put his characters' feelings in purely visual terms. A child of the silent era, Kalatozov spent some time on assignment in Los Angeles during the war, and his late-period work culls from both influences at once, investing the Hollywood melodrama with simple stories, spare dialogue, and gloriously expressive images. In recent years, Kalatozov's international breakthrough, 1957's Palme D'Or-winning The Cranes Are Flying, has been eclipsed somewhat by the unearthing of his 1964 propaganda film I Am Cuba, an outrageously beautiful (and beautifully outrageous) piece of pro-Castro Communist kitsch. But a new DVD edition, though bereft of any special features save for Chris Fujiwara's insightful liner notes, should cement Cranes' reputation as a key post-war effort, both for its cinematic audacity and for its frank, moving depiction of families and lovers torn apart by violence. A movie star that never was, Kalatozov's captivating tragedienne Tatiana Samoilova matches his intensity and bravado as a young woman whose devotion to Alexei Batalov, her new fiancé, is tested when he volunteers to fight the invading Germans. Dealt a second blow when her parents are killed in a bombing raid, Samoilova moves into Batalov's family home, where she fends off the increasingly aggressive overtures of his cousin (Alexander Shvorin), a piano prodigy who used his talents to wiggle out of the draft. But as her letters to the front continue to go unanswered, Samoilova finds it harder to resist Shvorin's advances, even though she remains steadfast in her belief that Batalov will return when the war is over. War melodramas don't get any more elemental than The Cranes Are Flying, yet Kalatozov has a way of making every cliché seem fresh again, if only by force of invention. Teary farewells and reunion scenes are old genre standbys, but there's nothing quite like the long shots of Samoilova searching for Batalov among the throngs of embracing lovers, or navigating intrepidly through a parade of departing tanks. Kalatozov lives for big dramatic epiphanies, and he isn't shy about going well over the top; in one particularly striking sequence, Shvorin pounds out a thundering concerto over the sounds of sirens and German bombs, steeling himself to advance on Samoilova while she's at her most terrified and vulnerable. At its best, The Cranes Are Flying could be watched with the sound off without losing any of its impact. A pure visual storyteller,Kalatozov conveys more in dizzying camera moves and bold swaths of light than words could express.