Les yeux noirs

There are many wondrous qualities to this movie, especially the performance of Marcello Mastroianni. I only want to mention one scene, my favorite. It occurs when Romano (Mastroianni) arrives by train in the Russian village of Sisoev where he is to set up a glass factory.

Upon de-training all he sees is a peasant woman with a cow. Suddenly, on the other side of the tracks a band plays. Romano walks across the welcome-carpet to a crowd of townspeople giving him a raucous reception. Actually folks here want the factory for themselves . The Italian is offered Russian bread to sample. Young girls bear doves and present the man with wreaths. The mayor recites a poem and gives a welcome speech. A medal is bestowed. Kisses galore are planted.

Singers and balalaika players appear. Caviar and lethal vodka is thrust upon the man, who is barely able to cope with its potency. It's a distillation (pun intended) of Russian-ness which overwhelms the guest as he is conducted by carriage to his hotel and carried in, tired and soused, later muttering "Sabatchka," the name of the little dog belonging to Anna, the Russian girl that has aroused his passion. Great, great!

I consider this movie a masterpiece. The performance of Marcello Mastroianni is simply sublime, one of the best I have ever seen from anyone, anywhere. Yes, the surface plot is about adultery, but the story is much more than that. I think this is a story about a man, an old man near the end of his life, looking back on his playboy, vagabond, good-for-nothing life, regretting it, but not knowing any other way to live. "Mother's lullaby and the Russian mist" is all he remembers about his own life, he says. Watch this old man cry, and it stirs you with all kinds of emotions and thoughts, makes you think about how you should live, that tragedy happens everyday, to every small man who must fend for himself and fail. You tell yourself you will never be like him, you pity him, disrespect him, despise him, but in the end you understand this man in the most profound sense. And you will never be able to forget that Russian mist either. Superb.

There's no really much you can say and analyze about this movie. It's not a movie by itself, it's a piece of art lost in the ocean of mundane cinema of the 20-th century. It's like the great literature, the great paintings of history, impregnated with a mystical and hard to define quality in it's texture. For me this is not simply a "movie", i say it again. Like Nostalghia or Andrei Rubliov of Tarkovsky , here the poetics transcends what we usually call cinema, or a film, because it gets a life on it's own, and becomes independent to critical observation. It's like a tiger in the Siberian forest, that you have to simply admire. A tiger is beautiful because it's a tiger, Oci Ciornie it's beautiful because it is Oci Ciornie. Something divine happened to Mihalkov and to the cast when thy made this piece of art. It was the greatest shame and scandal when the jury at Cannes awarded "Sous le Ciel de Satan" the Palme D'or, but who cares...Time is for the art what is for the wine. The good one gets better, the cheap one gets sour and becomes vinegar.

Yes, its story is an old chestnut. There's an excuse for Marcello Mastroianni to tell a story about himself and a Russian woman, and he does it, and there's an aftermath. But the story is so good and so well told (and acted and directed) that the device is like an old friend. This is one of Mikhailkov's best, right up there with Burnt by the Sun. It draws on Heifetz's Lady with a Dog (and Chekhov's short story too, for that matter) and parodies (or pays homage to) Fellini's 8 1/2--both just right for this Italo-Russian piece about Italians and Russians, which I found a pure delight. It revels in both poking fun of and warmly enjoying both Italian and Russian types and moods. For me, there was the additional pleasure of seeing Innokenti Smoktunovsky, who played the title role in Kozintsev's Hamlet, now middle-aged and as fine an actor as ever. Will it ever be released on DVD? It's about time this one is rediscovered.

A Russian/Italian co-production sounds like an uneasy marriage of mismatched temperaments, but 'Dark Eyes' is a remarkably cohesive mutual effort offering the best of both worlds: a wonderfully romantic story, a healthy love of laughter and high spirits, and a lingering air of Slavic melancholy. It's being sold as a showcase for the perennial charm of Marcello Mastroianni, but the film has more than just his performance to recommend it. The script, condensed from several tales by Anton Chekhov, has the elegant simplicity of a classic short story, following a charming but buffoonish husband in his pursuit of an attractive young Russian back to her native country, where he discovers a nation of people even crazier than he is. Some of the smaller roles have been drawn for the broadest effect, but under Nikita Mikhalkov's meticulous direction every character emerges as a full blooded human being, with Mastroianni himself offering a sensitive portrait of a man too in love with life to take it seriously. A nagging reservation: the final irony revealed in the epilogue adds one coincidence too many, and comes close to spoiling the already poignant mood. Just pretend it never happened.