Iosif Kheifits - Dama s sobachkoy aka The Lady with the Dog

On holiday in Yalta, Muscovite banker Dimitri Gurov contrives to meet a young woman who walks her dog. She's Anna Sergeyovna, trapped in a loveless marriage to a lackey. He's unhappy in an arranged marriage. With neither spouse at hand, Dimitri and Anna begin an affair. After a short time, she returns to Saratov, he to Moscow, believing it's good-by forever. All winter he is miserable, enervated, distracted by tristesse. In desperation, he contrives to go to Saratov, surprising her at a concert. Fearing discovery in her home town, she promises to come to Moscow. Will they cast aside reputation to live together, or will theirs be an affair of infrequent encounters in hotel rooms?





Sinopsis y comentarios: Durante un fin de semana en Yalta, el banquero moscovita Dimitri Gurov conoce a una joven que pasea con su perro. Ella es Anna Sergeyovna, una mujer atrapada en un matrimonio sin amor. Dimitri también es infeliz en su matrimonio. Se inicia un romance, que se corta con el fin de su estancia en Yalta.
Dimitri pasa todo el invierno con la idea de volver a ver a Anna, desesperado va a buscarla, pero entonces surge la pregunta ¿asumirán su relación o la mantendrán como una serie de encuentros a escondidas? Adaptación del relato de Anton Chejov





At first glance, any film director could find an endless source of film scripts available in the archives of the World literature. This is true, however, only if this director had no respect for the literary works. Otherwise, using a novel or short story as the basis for a film script requires a director with a remarkable understanding of its author, a total mastery of the film techniques, and of course genius. Heifitz seems to have possessed all three attributes when he directed his film "The Lady with the Little Dog", (also known as "The Lady with the Dog" and "The Lady with the Lap Dog"), an adaptation of "Dama s sobachkoi," by Anton Chekhov (1860 - 1904). This short story, which Heifitz rendered flawlessly on the screen, is among Chekhov's most poignant and lyrical.

Dmitri Gurov (Aleksei Batalov), a banker from Moscow in his early forties, is on vacation at Yalta, a seaside resort on the Black Sea notorious for its casual love affairs. He enters Verney's pavilion for a drink, sitting next to some familiars of the establishment. One of them tells him of a newly arrived, attractive young lady

"There has been a lady promenading, good enough to eat. All by herself, with a little white dog."

A moment later, the lady in question appears, walking along the esplanade with a Pomeranian dog on a leash. She is relatively young and attractive, and Gurov's instincts as a womanizer awaken. The next day, while having a drink at Verney's, Gurov gets a chance to start a conversation with the lady as she comes in and sits down, the little white dog a help in breaking the ice. Gurov and the lady later go for a walk. On the walk, she reveals that she is Anna Sergeyevna (Iya Savvina), she lives in the provincial town of Saratov, and is married to a dullard, a civil servant, a certain von Dideritz (Pantelejmon Krymov). After Gurov walks Anna back to her hotel, we see him in his room, pensive: obviously, this is going to be more than just another conquest

During the following week, Anna and Gurov spend lot of time together and grow closer. They go for walks and often observe the sunsets over the sea. Anna confesses to him that her life is one of loneliness, somewhat meaningless. One day, she goes to the harbor with a bouquet of flowers, as if to meet someone arriving on the daily steamboat, but Anna was just pretending: there is no one to be met. Gurov, who had followed her unnoticed, meets her and indirectly divulges some of his own feelings for her. They kiss and they go back to her hotel room, which is lit by a single candle. The seduction happens off screen, and in the next scene, Anna is now full of remorse. "You won't respect me now," she says. Gurov gently tries to reassure her that she is wrong. Anna alternates between self-reproach and rationalizing her behavior on account of her boring life in Saratov, having married young to a husband whom she calls a "lackey."

Later on, she has somewhat appeased her conscience and she tries to appear casual, minimizing the significance of her affair, but she is not too convincing. She receives a letter from her husband, asking her to return and help him take care of a minor ailment. So, the lovers say goodbye at the train station, just like many goodbyes at any other time, any other place, by any other lovers, torn and internally shattered. Gurov kisses her hand tenderly and walks along the train as it leaves the station. He turns and spies one of Anna's gloves on the ground. He picks it up, and in a self-delusional pretense, instead of keeping it as a memento, he casually puts it on the nearby fence. This is the beginning of a vain effort to forget his last fling.

In Moscow, Gurov has resumed his life with its routines: the Club, the walks, the friends, his work at the bank, etc. He hopes for Anna's memory to fade. During a dinner party at his house, we meet his wife (Nina Alisova), a rather stern and cold woman, his two children, and some of the couple's friends. Gurov is asked to play the piano, a romantic piece, which obviously means nothing to his audience. By contrast, the music makes Gurov's mind wander back to Yalta, and the candle on the piano, recalling the one in Anna's room after their first encounter, reinforces his nostalgia.

Gurov's memory of Anna increasingly haunts him. He is bored by his family, by the irrelevance of his daily routine, and by his friends' lack of understanding and sarcastic view of love. He decides to go to Saratov, telling his wife he is going on a business trip to St. Petersburg. Once in Satarov, he goes to Anna's house and waits outside, in the hope she will somehow emerge. The house is forbiddingly surrounded by a "long grey fence with nails in it," as Anna had told him back in Yalta. The white dog comes out of the house but not Anna, although he waits, freezing, late into the night. Returning to his hotel room, he eyes fall on a billboard with the poster advertising a performance of the operetta The Geisha, for the following night. He guesses that Anna will probably attend, and decides to take the chance and go there, too.

As hoped, the next day Anna is at the theater, but with her husband, of course. During the intermission, upon seeing the husband in the foyer smoking a cigarette, Gurov goes to meet Anna, who had remained in her seat. She is shocked at seeing him, and terrified. They rush from the auditorium in search of a more private area in the back of the theater, away from prying eyes. There, overwhelmed, they embrace and kiss passionately. Anna is obviously frightened of being discovered in this situation, and she promises Gurov she will come to Moscow.

Once back in Moscow, Gurov periodically checks at the post office for a letter announcing Anna's visit. Eventually, a letter reaches him informing him of her intended visit. Anna arrives in Moscow and sends a note by courier to Gurov, who is not at home. Sad and resigned, she waits in her lonely hotel room, at the mercy of fate. The opportunity for Gurov to come to her hotel arises the next day, as he takes his young daughter to school. Gurov meets Anna in her room. She is awkward and sad because, although they were just reunited, she knows they will soon part. He tries to be casual, but he, too, feels time's pressure. From their conversation, we learn that this meeting in a hotel room in Moscow is not the first one, but that there have been other meetings previously. So, this scene is meant to be typical, even with all its drama and agony. Gurov is again trying to be optimistic, implying that their affair will last ten to twenty years. The next scene shows the lovers, as seen from outside the double windowpane, engaged in a conversation. We don't hear their words, but we know that they are discussing how to bring a happy conclusion to their apparently hopeless situation.

The film ends with the poignant scene of Anna looking from her window at Gurov, who walks across the yard below, in the cold, snowy night. She raps desperately at the frozen window, and he turns around and salutes her.