Tonight on Amazon: Rated 4.3 out of 5, this fabulous Palme d’Or has been verified by 5.4 million viewers.

Moscow, 1941, Veronika and Boris are madly in love. But Germany invades Russia, Boris enlists and goes to the front. Mark, his cousin, avoids the draft and stays with Veronica, whom he also lusts after. With no news of a fiancé, in the chaos of war, a young woman reluctantly marries Mark. Hoping to find Boris, she works as a nurse in a Moscow hospital and discovers the horrors of conflict.

Soviet cinema, in the service of a totalitarian and scrupulously supervised state apparatus, nevertheless managed to move within this line and create a number of absolute masterpieces. It must be said that some Russian cinematographers, sometimes armed with almost unlimited resources and crazy ingenuity, gave their all for the best works that marked the history of cinema.

This is the case of Mikhail Kalatozov; A filmmaker revered by Scorsese (among others), who made the world rediscover his revolutionary film (in every sense of the word) Soy Cuba, with its completely insane shots.

Palma and 5.4 million viewers

In 1957, the Palme d’Or was released at the Cannes Film Festival and managed to attract no fewer than 5.4 million viewers – the 3rd biggest success ever recorded at the French box office for a Palme-winning film – when the trunks pass is clean. A marvel of melodrama and sensitivity, carried at arm’s length by the sublime Tatyana Samoilova, nicknamed “The Russian Audrey Hepburn”.

Made during the (short) period of liberalization that followed the death of Joseph Stalin. When the rods pass It was the first international success of Soviet cinema after World War II.

Turning his back on socialist realism, Kalatozov delivers his work with expressionistic, sometimes almost surreal images, full of camera movements and amazing sequence shots that are still seen in film schools.

Far from being a propaganda, anti-militarist work of astonishing lyricism, When the rods pass deserves all praise. To watch or rewatch on Prime Video!