The Unsent Letter

The Unsent Letter – It’s pretty apparent from the first shot of Mikhail Kalatozov’s The Unsent Letter that the Soviet geologists searching for diamonds in Siberia are going to come to grief. A helicopter, it seems, have deposited the four comrades on a sandy shoal in the middle of vast, shallow lake. Although the lake and the small sand reef are picturesque, it certainly seems like about the worst possible place from which to embark on an expedition. Our heroes slog through the knee-deep water and reach a tangled thicket. Kalatozov’s handheld camera zooms around them as they plow through the saplings, apparently changing direction every four or five steps – already, they seem irretrievably lost and, of course, the images beg the question of why these explorers are flailing around in circles in a thicket. Surely, there would be better ways to traverse the landscape. These opening shots epitomize what is wrong with Kalatozov’s man versus nature epic – the hapless geologists seem posed against dramatic landscapes solely for emotional, expressionistic effect. But it is never clear exactly what they are doing and much of their trudging around seems unmotivated, merely a way to get the figures into the proper spectacular relationship with adjacent cliffs, taiga, or swamp. The amount of gear that the explorers carry with them changes from shot to shot – in the opening scene, the scientists seem to have one small duffel bag between them. But, later, we seem them in resplendent spacious tents and wielding huge and heavy pick-axes and shovels – where did all this gear come from? And what happens to this equipment later when things become dire? Shot in 1959, The Unsent Letter is grandiosely beautiful. But on reflection, it’s also ridiculous. Typical of films of this era, the diamond-hunting geologists are three handsome men and one comely lass. Some rather peremptory romantic complications ensue but they are secondary to the stunning photography. Like many American westerns made in this period, the film alternates rather unconvincingly from extraordinary location footage to gorgeous, but static, studio shots – the many campfire scenes are all shot on a Mosfilm set with lurid painted sunsets in rear-projection. This movie is notable for its great pictorial beauty – characters in stark inky silhouette lumber forward against brilliantly bright skies, the camera signals exuberance when diamonds are finally found by plunging headlong through flowery shrubs and brambles, lightning flashes, there are torrential thunderstorms, and, if any lagoon or lake happens to be present, the characters gamely splash through its shallows. There is a long bravura passage where the characters are trapped in a forest fire – the scene goes on for twenty minutes and actually manages to make the fiery spectacle a bit tedious. Furthermore, the forest fire doesn’t make any sense – it has no rhythm and no structure, just acres of trees that seem to have been arbitrary set on fire so that the characters can walk among them. This is a Soviet film and so it’s crudely patriotic and unwaveringly grim. At moments of crisis, characters recite their Young Pioneer oaths and, in the end, everyone dies a terrible death. When the diamonds are discovered, the characters enjoy a single night of happiness – awaking, the forest is on fire and they are hopelessly lost: no one seems to have remembered to bring any maps or compasses on this six month expedition. A heroic engineer who has been wounded pulls a Scott of the Antarctic amble into oblivion, stumbling away from the camp to his doom, to spare the others from caring for him. The heroine freezes to death and, as the sole survivor is dying on an ice-floe that he has somehow set afire – this has to be seen to be believed – he has visions of noble Soviet civil engineers constructing a vast hydroelectric dam on the icy river. “This place will be called Diamond City,” someone says, “and we will no longer be dependant on foreigners for our industrial diamonds!” The film is too ridiculous to be recommended but it is useful for students of Soviet cinema. Kalatozov was later to produce the febrile and absurdly delirious I am Cuba (1964), regarded by people like Francis Coppola and Marty Scorsese as the most beautifully photographed film ever made. And the endless ankle-deep swamps that the characters traverse, the shattered woods, the murky forests – all of these elements are signatures features in the much greater films made by Andrei Tarkovsky.