| The Lady with the Dog | |
| Director: | Iosif Kheifits |
| Starring: | Iya Savvina |
| Music: | Nadezhda Simonyan |
| Cinematography: | Dmitri Meskhiyev Andrei Moskvin |
| Editing: | Ye. Bazhenova |
| Distributor: | Lenfilm |
| Runtime: | 83 minutes |
| Country: | Soviet Union |
| Language: | Russian |
The Lady with the Dog (Russian: Дама с собачкой, translit. Dama s sobachkoy) is a 1960 Soviet romantic drama film directed by Iosif Kheifits. It was entered into the 1960 Cannes Film Festival.[1]
The film is set in the 19th century at Yalta, the popular Russian resort on the Black Sea. Dmitri Gurov, Moscow banker, meets Anna Sergeyevna from Saratov, also vacationing. Beautiful Anna walks her dog daily to the delight of the men who observe her. Both Dmitri and Anna are married and both are unhappy in their situations. Both have come to Yalta without their spouses. A romance soon blooms into an affair. After their summer romance ends, both return to their marriages.
Dmitri returns to his former life, bored with working and going to his club to play cards. He is haunted by Anna's memory. At Christmas, Dmitri tells his wife he is going to St. Petersburg on business but actually goes to Saratov where he finally locates Anna who is attending an opera with her husband. Seizing an opportunity, he surprises her. She fears detection and promises to meet him in Moscow in a few weeks. Anna meets Dmitri in Moscow, their love fully rekindles, but they are frustrated with the reality that their marriages cannot be dissolved and they must meet secretly from then on. They make tentative plans to meet in the future. The closing scene has Anna looking from the window of her Moscow room while Dmitri leaves in the cold of the Russian winter.