There is the ticking of a clock. There is the tapping of a pencil. “Comrades,” a woman murmurs to herself. “Dear comrades…” That woman—alone, but absorbed in thought about a collective people at the beginning of her first solo feature—is Kira Muratova. Born in what was Romania in the mid-1930s, the filmmaker spent much of her itinerant life working in Odessa, Ukraine, where she made Brief Encounters (1967) and her following film, The Long Farewell (1971). Muratova described both as provincial melodramas. Romances that touch on the lives of country folk, they may be. Yet in style and in skill these films are far from provincial, not at all unsophisticated. While Muratova was more or less unknown to cinephiles around the world until the Soviet policy of perestroika in the late 1980s (when her work traveled to international festivals), she was a filmmaker of inordinate gifts right from the start.
As with that clock, that pencil, and that whisper of community, Muratova deftly assembles intricate layers of visual and sonorous detail into exquisite frames all across her films. Ornamentation, or dekorativnost, is essential throughout her cinema, where it is nestled into a broader roughness, or sherokhovatost. Attention to luxurious textures and sparkling trinkets does not detract from existential demands—the salient need for running water, the pressing desire for another person’s warmth—but adds to the fulsome fabric of life. In that spirited mesh of experience, people dream, fall in love, and have their hearts broken: a clutching mother does not want to let go of her restless son; two women cherish the same rootless man. We might’ve heard such stories before. But these ones belong to Ukraine in all its national particularities, and stem from the singular mind of Kira Muratova.

There is the ticking of a clock. There is the tapping of a pencil. &#8220;Comrades,&#8221; a woman murmurs to herself. &#8220;Dear comrades…&#8221; That woman&#8212;alone, but absorbed in thought about a collective people at the beginning of her first solo feature&#8212;is Kira Muratova. Born in what was Romania in the mid-1930s, the filmmaker spent much of her itinerant life working in Odessa, Ukraine, where she made Brief Encounters (1967) and her following film, The Long Farewell (1971). Muratova described both as provincial melodramas. Romances that touch on the lives of country folk, they may be. Yet in style and in skill these films are far from provincial, not at all unsophisticated. While Muratova was more or less unknown to cinephiles around the world until the Soviet policy of perestroika in the late 1980s (when her work traveled to international festivals), she was a filmmaker of inordinate gifts right from the start.
As with that clock, that pencil, and that whisper of community, Muratova deftly assembles intricate layers of visual and sonorous detail into exquisite frames all across her films. Ornamentation, or dekorativnost, is essential throughout her cinema, where it is nestled into a broader roughness, or sherokhovatost. Attention to luxurious textures and sparkling trinkets does not detract from existential demands&#8212;the salient need for running water, the pressing desire for another person&#8217;s warmth&#8212;but adds to the fulsome fabric of life. In that spirited mesh of experience, people dream, fall in love, and have their hearts broken: a clutching mother does not want to let go of her restless son; two women cherish the same rootless man. We might&#8217;ve heard such stories before. But these ones belong to Ukraine in all its national particularities, and stem from the singular mind of Kira Muratova.

Odessa’s Melodramas:  Two by Kira Muratova

ODESSA’S MELODRAMAS:  TWO BY KIRA MURATOVA

Kira Muratova was little known to international cinephiles until two decades into her directing career, but she was a filmmaker of inordinate gifts from the start. Grounding love stories in the fulsome fabric of Ukrainian life, her early melodramas are exquisitely crafted and achingly beautiful.

Kira Muratova was little known to international cinephiles until two decades into her directing career, but she was a filmmaker of inordinate gifts from the start. Grounding love stories in the fulsome fabric of Ukrainian life, her early melodramas are exquisitely crafted and achingly beautiful.