Letter Never Sent (film)


Letter Never Sent is a 1960 Soviet adventure drama film directed by Mikhail Kalatozov and starring Tatiana Samoilova. It was entered into the 1960 Cannes Film Festival, but was withdrawn just before the screening on 17 May; according to the Soviet representatives, the film was "unfinished".
The film was shot in black-and-white with a aspect ratio and monaural sound. It was Kalatozov's follow-up to perhaps his most lauded film, The Cranes Are Flying, which also starred Samoilova.

Plot

A guide and three geologists head to the boreal forest of central Siberia. After much strenuous effort and nearly running out of food, they succeed in finding diamonds in Bolshaya Zemlya. Before they can return, they are trapped by a forest fire that cuts them off from the canoe where their supplies are kept. Now the battle is to survive.

Cast

released the film in DVD and Blu-ray Disc as Letter Never Sent; according to Slant Magazine, having started with "pristine materials", "Criterion's blue-ribbon authoring is, of course, flawless, as is their uncompressed monaural track, which is as dense with human lamentations as mother nature's libidinous, murderous roar"; they note that the "bare-bones single disc" is accompanied only by an essay by film scholar Dina Iordanova, who "does a fine job establishing the film's historical context."