April 28, 2009

The lady with the dog

A film of former Soviet Union shot in 1960, the cinematography is one of the most artistic of all black and whites. The shades of water when the two protagonists were sitting on a bench by the sea, for example is an memorable one. But the most poignant and poetic is the scene when they meet in Moscow in a wintry day. While they were talking in a room, the camera follows the sound of music and cuts to outside the building where a man is playing flute under the starry night. As the camera is positioned at ground level near the player, the confined space between buildings forms a near V shape and it feels as though he is talking with the twinkling stars above the contained space. Visually the scene is rather dark and bare, leading our imagination to the stars and music which are the stars of that scene.

Inside, the heroine laments that they are like two birds being kept in separate cages. The above scene seems to confirm this in visual forms.

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