''Wings'' (russian: Крылья, tr. ''Krylya'') is a 1966 Soviet

black and white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

directed by Ukrainian filmmaker

Larisa Shepitko Larisa Yefimovna Shepitko (, uk, Лариса Юхимівна Шепітько, translit=Larysa Yukhymivna Shepitko; 6 January 1938 – 2 July 1979) was a Soviet film director, screenwriter and actress. She is considered one of the best fema ...

, her first

feature film A feature film or feature-length film is a narrative film (motion picture or "movie") with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole presentation in a commercial entertainment program. The term ''feature film'' originall ...

made after graduating from the All-Russian State Institute for Cinematography. In 1979, the little known

director Director may refer to: Literature * ''Director'' (magazine), a British magazine * ''The Director'' (novel), a 1971 novel by Henry Denker * ''The Director'' (play), a 2000 play by Nancy Hasty Music * Director (band), an Irish rock band * ''Di ...

screenwriter A screenplay writer (also called screenwriter, scriptwriter, scribe or scenarist) is a writer who practices the craft of screenwriting, writing screenplays on which mass media, such as films, television programs and video games, are based. ...

and

actress An actor or actress is a person who portrays a Character (arts), character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek ...

died in a car accident, leaving behind only a small artistic output of four films.

Plot

Forty-one-year-old Nadezhda Petrukhina (

Maya Bulgakova Maya Grigoryevna Bulgakova (russian: Ма́йя Григо́рьевна Булга́кова; 19 May 19327 October 1994) was a Soviet and Russian actress. She was one of the People's Artist of the RSFSR (1976). Biography Bulgakova was born on 1 ...

), a once heroic

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Soviet

fighter pilot A fighter pilot is a military aviator trained to engage in air-to-air combat, air-to-ground combat and sometimes electronic warfare while in the cockpit of a fighter aircraft. Fighter pilots undergo specialized training in aerial warfare and ...

, is now living a quiet, but disappointingly ordinary life as a school principal at a construction-oriented trade school. Beloved and revered by the generation that experienced the

Great Patriotic War The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of conflict between the European Axis powers against the Soviet Union (USSR), Poland and other Allies, which encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltics), and Sout ...

, Nadezdha struggles to connect with the generation that followed hers. Nadezhda disapproves of her adopted daughter's choices in men, and worries that her daughter, Tanya (

Zhanna Bolotova Zhanna Andreyevna Bolotova (russian: Жанна Андреевна Болотова; October 10, 1941, Novosibirsk Oblast, USSR) is a Soviet film actress who was popular in the 1970s and the early 1980s. In 1977 she became a USSR State Prize laurea ...

), unaware of her own adoption, might discover the truth. Conversations between the two emphasize their tense, understated and ambiguous relationship. When Tanya encourages her mother to quit her job as school principal and begin a new life with a husband, Nadezhda responds with a cold lecture on the importance of self-sacrifice and duty to the state, values she had when she had served in the military. At the school where she works, however, Nadezhda is confronted by children who can neither appreciate the sacrifices she made during the war, nor the sacrifices she makes for them now. Nadezdha's brief, tantalizing memories of flight, in her

Yakovlev Yak-9 The Yakovlev Yak-9 (russian: Яковлев Як-9) is a single-engine, single-seat multipurpose fighter aircraft used by the Soviet Union and its allies during World War II and the early Cold War. It was a development of the robust and successf ...

fighter aircraft, tumbling through clouds, are interspersed with reality and the moments of dull monotony, such as her daily commute on the bus. A visit to a local museum, where Nadezhda sees a photograph of a fellow pilot Mitya (Leonid Dyachkov), who later also became her lover during

, brings back memories of his final flight. Nadezdha had flown her own fighter plane alongside Mitya's when he and his plane were hit by stray gunfire. Unknown to her, he was dead at his controls as his plane gradually descended until crashing and she was unable to intercede. Her final maneuvers were to try to cause a visual disturbance in front of Mitya's crippled aircraft by rolling the wings of her own aircraft in front of his aircraft in order to jar his field of vision to consciousness but the maneuver was to no avail. Mitya's photograph, and the subsequent memory of his death in the conflict, leads Nadezhda to the local airfield. While visiting a friend, Nadezhda has a chance to sit in one of the airfield's Yakovlev Yak-18 PM trainers. The flying instructor, her friend who recognizes and greets her. She climbs aboard a single-seat aircraft while the others put away the planes. Seated in the cockpit, Nadezhda experiences a flush of emotions as she examines the instrument panel of the aircraft. By carefully examining the instrument panel her memories are thrown back to her days as a fighter pilot and she recalls the day of her last flight with her fellow pilot Mitya. The flying instructor and his students playfully push her aircraft back to the hangar while she is seated at the controls. As the aircraft is about to pushed into the hangar, the students are surprised when Nadezhda starts the engine. She then swings around and taxies out to the runway, with the astonished instructor and students running after her. Lifting off, her memory still flushed with emotion from her visit to the museum and seeing Mitya's photograph again, she repeats the final maneuvers she had performed in her aircraft when she tried to bring Mitya back to consciousness in the last moments of his final flight so many years ago.

Cast

as Nadezhda Petrukhina *

as Tanya *Panteleimon Krymov as Pavel Gavrilovich *Leonid Dyachkov as Mitya Grachov *Vladimir Gorelov as Igor *Yury Medvedev as Boris Grigoryevich *Nikolay Grabbe as Kostya Shuvalov *Zhanna Aleksandrova as Zinka *

Sergei Nikonenko Sergei Petrovich Nikonenko (russian: Серге́й Петрович Никоненко; born 16 April 1941 in Moscow) is a Russian actor. He performed in more than eighty films since 1961. Selected filmography * 1967 ** '' The Red and the Whi ...

as Sergei Bystryakov *

Rimma Markova Rimma Vasilievna Markova (russian: Римма Васильевна Маркова; 3 March 1925 – 15 January 2015) was a Russian film actress. She was named a People's Artist of Russia in 1994, whereas her younger brother Leonid Markov was nam ...

as Shura *Arkady Trusov as Morozov *Olga Gobzeva as Journalist ;Party Guests *

Yevgeniy Yevstigneyev Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevstigneyev (russian: Евгений Александрович Евстигнеев; 9 October 1926 — 4 March 1992) was a prominent Soviet and Russian stage and film actor, theatre pedagogue, one of the founders of the ...

as Misha *

Igor Kashintsev Igor Konstantinovich Kashintsev (russian: Игорь Константинович Кашинцев;Vitaly Vulf as Party Guest *Valery Zalivin as Party Guest ;Minor Characters *Vladimir Burmistrov as Cadet *Natalya Gitserot as School Secretary Natalya Maksimilyanovna *Pavel Gurov as Tailor *Pyotr Dolzhanov as Vladimir Danilovich *Maria Kravchunovskaya as Bystryakov's Neighbor *Boris Yurchenko as Sinitsin *Alevtina Rumyantseva as Museum Tour Guide (voiced by

Maria Vinogradova Maria Sergeyevna Vinogradova (russian: Мари́я Серге́евна Виногра́дова; 13 July 1922 – 2 July 1995) was a Russian actress. She appeared in more than one hundred films from 1940 to 1995. Filmography References ...

) *Lev Vainshtein as Council Member *Ivan Turchenko as Council Member *Dmitry Nikolayev as Boy Next Door

Production

Integration of wartime

Messerschmitt Bf 109 The Messerschmitt Bf 109 is a German World War II fighter aircraft that was, along with the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, the backbone of the Luftwaffe's fighter force. The Bf 109 first saw operational service in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War an ...

combat footage with live-action footage of Yakovlev Yak-9 fighter aircraft were used in a dream sequence.

Release

''Wings'' was released on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

The Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...

in 2008 through its

Eclipse An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ce ...

series as part of a box set together with '' The Ascent''.

Reception

Film critic

Paul Schrader Paul Joseph Schrader (; born July 22, 1946) is an American screenwriter, film director, and film critic. He first received widespread recognition through his screenplay for Martin Scorsese's ''Taxi Driver'' (1976). He later continued his collabo ...

, as well as director

Ben Wheatley Benjamin Wheatley (born 7 May 1972) is an English filmmaker and screenwriter. Beginning his career in advertising, Wheatley first gained recognition and acclaim for his commercials and short films, before transitioning into feature films and tel ...

, chose ''Wings'' as one of their top 10 favorite Criterion releases. Critic

Jonathan Rosenbaum Jonathan Rosenbaum (born February 27, 1943) is an American film critic and author. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for ''The Chicago Reader'' from 1987 to 2008, when he retired. He has published and edited numerous books about cinema and has ...

has called it a "lovely and nuanced character study," an analysis repeated by critic Michael Koresky's description of the film as a "penetrating character study." Critic

David Sterritt David Sterritt (born September 11, 1944) is a film critic, author and scholar A scholar is a person who pursues academic and intellectual activities, particularly academics who apply their intellectualism into expertise in an area of stud ...

wrote that it is "a remarkable movie, especially for a directorial debut," while another critic,

Dave Kehr David Kehr (born 1953) is an American museum curator and film critic. For many years a critic at the ''Chicago Reader'' and the ''Chicago Tribune,'' he later wrote a weekly column for ''The New York Times'' on DVD releases. He later became a c ...

, wrote that Shepitko learned from

Alexander Dovzhenko Oleksandr Petrovych Dovzhenko or Alexander Petrovich Dovzhenko ( uk, Олександр Петрович Довженко, ''Oleksandr Petrovych Dovzhenko''; russian: Алекса́ндр Петро́вич Довже́нко, ''Aleksandr Petro ...

how "to bend documentary style realism to more subjective, poetic ends". Similarly, ''

Senses of Cinema ''Senses of Cinema'' is a quarterly online film magazine founded in 1999 by filmmaker Bill Mousoulis. Based in Melbourne, Australia, ''Senses of Cinema'' publishes work by film critics from all over the world, including critical essays, career ...

'' praised the film's "rich layers of meaning,"

DVD Verdict DVD Verdict was a judicial-themed website for DVD reviews. The site was founded in 1999. The editor-in-chief was Michael Stailey, who owned the website between 2004 and 2016, and the site employed a large editorial staff of critics, whose reviews ...

wrote that the "most astonishing thing about ''Wings'' is how young Shepitko was when she directed it. It feels like the work of an older director, one who would understand what it's like to live in the shadow of your younger self" and that much of the film's "success leans on the performance of Bulgakova, and she does deliver a phenomenal performance. On a whole, the film doesn't stand out in terms of its storytelling or cinematography, but as a sensitive human portrait, it truly is remarkable," and critic Dennis Schwartz called it a "brilliantly conceived work of art." In ''

Sight & Sound ''Sight and Sound'' (also spelled ''Sight & Sound'') is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing ...

s 2012 surveys of the greatest films ever made, two critics (Sergio Grmek Germani and Erica Gregor) and two directors (

Carol Morley Carol Anne Morley (born 14 January 1966) is an English film director, screenwriter and producer. She is best known for her semi-documentary ''Dreams of a Life'', released in 2011, about Joyce Carol Vincent, who died in her North London bedsit i ...

and Vlado Škafar) voted for ''Wings''."Votes for ''Krylya'' (1966): The Greatest Films of All Time 2012,"
''

''. Retrieved: 1 February 2014.

References

External links

* * *
''Wings''
at the ''

TCM Movie Database Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie-oriented pay-TV network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasting campus in the Midtown business district of Atl ...

'' 1966 films Russian aviation films Films directed by Larisa Shepitko Films set in Russia Mosfilm films Russian black-and-white films Russian drama films 1960s Russian-language films Soviet drama films 1966 drama films Soviet black-and-white films {{1960s-USSR-film-stub