• It’s the third Kalatozov film I’ve seen (after I Am Cuba and The Cranes are Flying) and it cements Kalatozov as one of the great stylists of this or any era of cinema. Letter Never Sent comes between those two films from Kalatozov, Cranes is 1957 and I Am Cuba is 64’
  • Opens with a gorgeous helicopter reverse tracking shot
  • Heavy handheld camera work in the Siberian River and Taiga forest
  • There’s a magnificent graphic match dissolve edit—we go from one set of eyes (sender of the letter) to another set of eyes (receiver of the letter) in a memory flashback
  • A ridiculously dazzling and experimental framing shot/scene. There are the three protagonists crowded around the camera in a tightly-spaced tent— and then in the background there’s a fire, and then a character who moves back there into the vacated space in the frame
  • Kalatozov is in love with the canted frames— he also moves the camera to simulate the violence which is very ahead of his time
  • The high angle shots again and again show the flowing river as part of the mise-en-scene- striking—lots of close-up low-angles like Welles— heavy close-ups
  • Flames in front of the camera is bold— doesn’t always work but I like that it’s a bit of foreshadowing as well to the forest fire— which his an utterly impressive set piece and sequences- lots of “oners” hand-held tracking shots of the protagonists moving through the fire, then through the ash, then through the snow- sometime in wonderful silhouettes
  • Absolutely has influence on The Revenant– it’s a survival film and some of the shots (river shot)— Iñárritu clearly loves Kalatozov – he’s borrowed from I Am Cuba as well
  • Sometimes Kalatozov will use the cluttered flames in the mise-en-scene as a hidden cut (again like Iñárritu in say Birdman but also like Hitchcock in Rope
  • Again- graphic match edits—he has an entire extended dialogue scene (there aren’t many of these in the entire film) with each face, in profile, almost taking up the entire frame like a mountain- haven’t seen anything like it
  • In the snow sequences you can tell Kalatozov is bored with the flatness so he meticulously creates these little hills to show nuance and texture—some of the shots remind me of Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia which would come 2 years later- Lean uses sand instead of snow of course
  • One of the three leads dies in each element- structurally and formally the film is so sound- fire, ash, snow
  • There’s a great hallucination/surreal scene like Sunrise from Murnau
  • Ends with symmetry- booked helicopter tracking show finale
  • Must-See after one viewing