THE LADY WITH THE DOG Movie Review

Chekhov's The Lady with the Little Dog was the basis for this little-seen, completely wonderful Soviet film by director Josef Heifitz. In Yalta at the turn of the century, a vacationing married man named Dmitri (Alexei Batalov) meets a lovely young married woman, Anna (lya Savvina), when he notices her on her daily walks with her little dog. They begin an affair, but can't bring themselves to end their marriages. Instead, they continue to meet through the years, briefly and in hiding. Their heartbreaking dilemma remains unresolved as the film closes. The Lady with the Dog is one of the rare films in which indecisiveness isn't presented tediously. The movie is gracefully conceived and beautifully performed; many of the images, such as Anna seated at the pier, her little dog by her side as she waits for Dimitri to appear, are quite unforgettable. It's a nearly perfect love story, and has a considerable cult following (Ingmar Bergman is a fan). It was photographed by Andrei Moskvin, one of the two cinematographers of Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible. Special Prize, 1960 Cannes Film Festival.

NEXT STOP … Oblomov, The Overcoat (1959), Brief Encounter

1959 86m/B RU lya Savvina, Alexei Batalov, Ala Chostakova, N. Alisova; D: Yosif Heifitz. VHS WST, FCT, TPV