Wings (1966 film)
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| Directed by | Larisa Shepitko |
| Produced by | V. Maslov |
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| Music by | Roman Ledenyov |
| Cinematography | Igor Slabnevich |
| Edited by | L. Lysenkova |
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81 minutes |
| Country | Soviet Union |
| Language | Russian |
Wings (Russian: Крылья, tr. Krylya) is a 1966 Soviet black and white drama film directed by Ukrainian filmmaker Larisa Shepitko, her first feature film made after graduating from the All-Russian State Institute for Cinematography. In 1979, the little known director, screenwriter and actress died in a car accident, leaving behind only a small artistic output of four films.
Forty-one-year-old Nadezhda Petrukhina (Maya Bulgakovа), a once heroic World War II Soviet fighter pilot, is now living a quiet, but disappointingly ordinary life as a school principal at a construction-oriented trade school. Beloved and revered by the generation that experienced the Great Patriotic War, Nadezdha struggles to connect with the generation that followed hers. Nadezhda disapproves of her adopted daughter's choices in men, and worries that her daughter, Tanya (Zhanna Bolotova), unaware of her own adoption, might discover the truth.
Conversations between the two emphasize their tense, understated and ambiguous relationship. When Tanya encourages her mother to quit her job as school principal and begin a new life with a husband, Nadezhda responds with a cold lecture on the importance of self-sacrifice and duty to the state, values she had when she had served in the military. At the school where she works, however, Nadezhda is confronted by children who can neither appreciate the sacrifices she made during the war, nor the sacrifices she makes for them now.
Nadezdha's brief, tantalizing memories of flight, in her Yakovlev Yak-9 fighter aircraft, tumbling through clouds, are interspersed with reality and the moments of dull monotony, such as her daily commute on the bus. After a visit to a local museum, where Nadezhda sees a photograph of Mitya (Leonid Dyachkov), her former lover during World War II, brings back memories of his final flight. Nadezdha had flown alongside Mitya but was horrified to realize he was dead at his controls and she was unable to intercede. Mitya's photograph, and the subsequent memory of his death in the conflict, leads Nadezhda to the local airfield.
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