Sexual Infidelities cont.: The Cranes Are Flying
In contrast to Ballad of a Soldier, The Cranes are Flying (1957) focuses its full attention on the identity of the ‘fallen woman’ of war, and the question of Veronika’s fidelity to Boris is examined in its full scope of melodramatic emotion. According to Alexander Prokhorov, The Cranes Are Flying “shifts the focus to the war experience of the most powerless and sinful member of the community: the unfaithful woman”, and in so doing allows for the Soviet audience, with its Thaw-era values, to be ultimately sympathetic to her suffering (“Soviet Family Melodrama of the 1940s and 1950s: From Wait for Me to The Cranes Are Flying” p. 214). From Boris’ departure to the front and his subsequent (although unreported) death, to the sudden death of Veronika’s parents and her rape by Mark—Veronika endures the spectrum of feminine suffering from the outset of the war. But what most deeply affects her is the rejection she faces from Boris’ family when she marries Mark, and it is here that the audience alone is privilege to the truth—both Mark’s true, predatory nature, as well as Veronika’s emotional fidelity to Boris and the continuing hope that he is still alive on the front.
The climax of Veronika’s emotional turmoil and alienation comes at a moment when she is most directly attempting to aid her country in the war effort: she is working as a nurse with wounded soldiers in the local hospital, which is run by Boris’ father. One wounded young man loses control of his emotions when he receives a letter that tells him that his girlfriend has married another man in his absence. Suddenly the entire room of men, including Boris’ father, begins to castigate this unknown woman, and indirectly, Veronika:
As a nearby soldier describes how “these broads are worse than the fascists—aiming right at the heart”, the archetype of the unfaithful woman is elevated from an unworthy and unwanted figure in society to the status of the enemy. This quote establishes Veronika’s infidelity (real or perceived, it does not matter) as being comparable to the behavior of a traitor in the eyes of her community, while the intense close-ups on her face reveal the impact of these harsh words and evoke sympathy from the film’s audience. Ultimately this emotional turmoil leads Veronika to attempt suicide shortly afterwards, and precedes her subsequent transformation from a fallen woman to a patriotic mother.
Both Ballad of a Soldier and The Cranes Are Flying invoke the trope of the fallen woman in their wartime narratives, and while the former is both superficial and critical in its representation, the latter offers a more complex and meaningful glimpse into the psyche of, and personal impact on, the woman in question. Veronika’s characterization is ultimately that of a victim worthy of sympathy, rather than a traitor to the nation. This loosening of judgment upon the behavior of women (however marginal it may have been) was not in any way reflective of attitudes during the period of the Second World War itself, rather it is indicative of the evolving status of women that began during the post-Stalin Thaw. Even then the question of sexual promiscuity was predicated upon the next feminine archetype invoked in war films: the patriotic single mother.