Winner of the Palme D’Or at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, Mickhail Kalatozov’s film is a mixture, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes bizarre, of magazine story-like storylines, genuine lyricism and full bodied virtuoso camerawork. Made during the de-Stalinisation period of the late 1950’s and set during the Second World War, after her fiancee (Alexia Battalion) goes to the front, the beautiful Moscovite (Tatiana Samoilova) is trapped into a loveless marriage with an unpatriotic and decadent pianist played by A. Shovrin. There are some fine sequences and Miss Samilova, a grandniece of Stanislavsky, does him honour.