Iyulskiy dozhd (July Rain). 1967. USSR. Directed by Marlen Khutsiev. Screenplay by Anatoli Grebnev, Khutsiev. With Evgeniya Uralova, Aleksandr Belyavskiy, Yuriy Vizbor. In Russian; English subtitles. 107 min.
Ravishingly photographed in widescreen black and white, July Rain vibrates with life even as it charts the death of young love. Together with its companion piece, I Am Twenty, the film is one of Khutsiev’s most touching statements about modern urban alienation and the craving for human warmth and mutual understanding. Lena, an intellectual in her late twenties, is disillusioned by the “philistinism, cynicism and indifference people so often display to one another” (Khutsiev). She drifts apart from her ambitious fiancé, Volodya, and his circle of phony Moscow careerists, taking comfort in the solitude of her apartment and in intimate telephone conversations with a stranger who showed her kindness in the rain.