clanciai Review of Oci ciornie

Oci ciornie (1987)

An Italian overwhelmed by his experience of Russia by his life's only glimpse of love

[10/10 · 21 December 2020]

Nikita Mikhalkov made practically only masterpieces, but this ought to be his most beautiful film, in fact, one of the most beautiful films ever made, ranking on a parallel position with Josif Kheifts' film of 1960 on Anton Tchekhov's short story "The Lady with a Dog" and clearly influenced if not inspired by it: their beauty is of the same kind. Also here the story is rather vague in character, as the end of the film becomes the beginning of the real story, which we cannot know anything about. A passenger on a boat goes to the bar to have something to drink and is met by the fact that the bar will not open for an hour, but another man is sitting there, an Italian called Romano, and when the passenger proves to be Russian, Romano is overjoyed, because he has been to Russia, and they tell each other the story of their frustrating marriages. The whole film has very much the character of Anton Tchekhov's stories, the same melancholy, the same futility, the same kind of pathetic characters displayed with warmth and compassion, and the same depth of the unfathomable strangeness of human destiny. As Marcello Mastroianni's wife we see Silvana Mangano in her full maturity, while the lady Marcello falls in love with, Elena Safonova, really is indescribable in her lovability. The scenery is idyllic all the way, almost all constantly dressed in shining white, it happens in 1903 and 1911, and all the paradisiacal beauty of that lost age before the First World War is rendered in constant breathaking beauty - the music by Francis Lai is perfectly appropriate as well. In brief, this is to enjoy and more than one time if not forever.