Dama s sobachkoy

In the Nineteenth Century, at the seaside resort of Yalta, the upper class Dimitri Gurov (Aleksey Batalov) from Moscow meets Anna Sergeyovna (Iya Savvina) walking with her little dog. Both have unhappy marriages: Dimitri has a marriage of convenience arranged by the family when he was a college boy and Anna married a lackey for love that has gone, and they have a love affair.

When Anna returns to Saratov and Dimitri to Moscow, he has a boring life at home, spending his time working and going to the club after hours alone to drink and play cards with his friends. On Christmas, Dimitri misses Anna and lies to his wife, telling that he has a business trip to Saint Petersburg. However, he heads to Saratov and he meets Anna in the Opera House with her husband. Their love kindles and Anna promises to meet him in Moscow. In a period when divorce would be unthinkable, Anna and Dimitri are doomed to meet each other in hotel rooms.

"Dama s Sobachkoj" is a classy and melancholic love story by Iosif Kheifits based on a short story by Anton Chekhov. The film is developed in slow pace, with magnificent black and white cinematography and music score.

Iya Savvina has one of the prettiest faces I have ever seen and it is easy to explain the initial attraction of Dimitri for Anna. Each frame is magnificently shot in beautiful planes and details. The DVD released by the Brazilian distributor Cult Classic is totally restored with perfect image and sound. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "A Dama do Cachorrinho" ("The Lady of the Little Dog")

This film was made for the 100th anniversart of Anton Tchekhov, and like almost all Russian films made on their literature it is extremely faithful to the original. Anton Tchekhov is all there from beginning to end, and although the film mainly consists of only trivialities, like David Lean's "Brief Encounter", it is only the more exciting and spellbinding for its attention to the smallest details and the pettiest characters showing up on the way. Alexey Batalov and Iya Savvina are more than perfect in their leading roles, her melancholy frailty shines throughout the film with absolute truthfulness, and his resigned broodings, you actually get nothing to know about him until long after you learned everything about her, adds to the very romantic nature of this adorable cinematic poetry, unique and unsurpassed in its kind. Another important support and enhancement of this extreme romanticism in all its very restrained discipline - there is not one superfuous detail in the whole film - is the mesmerizing and unforgettable music by Nadezhda Simonyan. The tune will haunt you forever, and although this is a story without end, nothing is resolved, there are only question marks and incertitude in the end, that is actually where the film and story starts. You'll never know how it continues, but somehow it will continue forever.

They don't make films like this any more. In film you either make it in the best time honoured classical tradition: logical sequence, irony, exquisite painstaking set-ups with perfect lighting, costumes, extras, everything pleasing to the eye and the heart and you find others watching it with a smile on their faces; or you make it so fast, jump edits, ramping, so wild that only you know the rules. Well you can do it the Clint Eastwood way which is the perfectly oiled machine: film them during the rehearsal. He really belongs to the classical genre. The problem with the second way is that you can't sit easily through two hours of a movie made like that. A pop video of two minutes fine, otherwise you emerge from the cinema with your brain fried and the stupid expression you get after sitting through three hours of watching ad commercial festivals. I've done it many times, and it's unnatural, and not good for you. THE LADY WITH THE LITTLE DOG is a perfect little story, superbly acted, observed, costumed, directed, lit, everything. A masterpiece of black and white. It cannot be faulted in any way. It must have taken ages to do the set-ups, something no one can afford to do these days; but then with the state paying the salaries, who was counting? So it was made during the Soviet era: but what is perfect, is perfect, for all time.

"Dama s sobachkoy" or "The Lady With the Dog" is an adaptation of the famous (and rather good) Anton Chekhov short story of the same name. Director Iosif Kheifits approaches the film sensibly by adapting not only the story but also many of the sensibilities and characteristics present in Chekhov's writing.

First of all, the pacing: In keeping with Chekhov's short story the pacing is natural in the way one would relate a truly affecting story from their life- slowly but also in a sense relentlessly and without break. Also typical of Chekhov and thankfully not changed in this film version is the lack of a moral 'message' as well as the subtle characterization that depends on highlighting character traits rather than blatantly telling you what sort of character to expect.

As a film "Dama s sobachkoy" is definitely impressive with the striking black and white photography by Dmitri Meskhiyev and Andrei Moskvin perfectly accentuating the various moods of the film. There's also a memorable score by Nadezhda Simonyan to add to the film with the main theme being particularly effective.

I'm not sure if I see any real flaws in "Dama s sobachkoy" but somehow it doesn't come off as a classic. What it does succeed in is becoming an excellent adaptation of a memorable short story that is pulled off unusually but very well regardless.

8/10

The first classic trait of the film which captures the senses, is the outstanding cinematography - as one viewer notes, in the best traditions of silent film. Indeed, too much is left unspoken by the characters. Everything's a delicate and delightful play of fine sensations - a feast for the intelligent viewer whose thread through the labyrinth of characters' feelings is often a glimpse, a twitch, and a seemingly inconsequent line in Chekhov's text. A great burden lies on the shoulder's of the two main actors, Batalov and Savina. While the former does a brilliant job, the latter, in my opinion, is classes underneath. She is fit to play a typical Soviet-era character, not Chekhov's.