Critics reviews

The Cranes are Flying (1957), for all its poetry, is almost too colossal, too vast in scale, too much a monument to its own splendor and audaciousness. . . . Kalatozov works wonders with the silence shared by lovers, the way that intimacy transforms even the drabbest of domestic spaces. It's a bracing experience, despite some reservations.

There is nothing exceptional about [Boris or Veronica] – nothing, that is, except their shared sensitivity, spontaneity, and sincerity. It is these qualities that endear them to us in the first, joyful scenes of the film and allow us to experience the irruption of the war as a violation not only of the peaceful world order but also of their personal idyll.