The Pilots
About The Pilots
Sergei Belyaev takes up a plane that has not been properly maintained. He crashes, lands in hospital, and the aircraft burns. Student pilot Galya Bystrova, who is stuck on him, copies his risks in the air. The school head, Rogachev, pulls both of them back to discipline. They come out of it as working pilots. Bystrova is posted to the Pamirs. Rogachev, who loves her, is sent to Sakhalin.
Cast & crew
More about The Pilots
Yuli Raizman directed, with Grigori Levkoyev. Aleksandr Macheret wrote the script. Leonid Kosmatov photographed and Nikolai Kryukov composed the score. Boris Shchukin, Yevgeniya Melnikova, and Ivan Koval-Samborsky lead the cast. Release dates on record are February 1935 and April 25, 1935. The film runs 80 minutes. English titles include Men on Wings.
Themes
Background
Soviet aviation films of the mid-1930s treated the flying school as a factory for pilots. This one punishes show flying and rewards the headmaster's rules.
Making
Raizman shoots the school as a workplace story: a crash, a student who imitates the wrong habit, and two assignments at opposite ends of the country.
Look
Leonid Kosmatov shot the field, the crash, and the training flights.
Music
Nikolai Kryukov wrote the score.
Preservation
A print survives.
Notes
- The Russian title is Lyotchiki.
- Zoya Fyodorova and Aleksandr Chistyakov are in the supporting cast.
- The crash is blamed on flying a neglected machine, not on enemy action.
- The last postings split the pair: Pamirs for her, Sakhalin for him.
- Shchukin, later Lenin on screen, plays in the flying school.
Scenes
- Belyaev crashes and the plane burns.
- Bystrova repeats his risks on a training flight.
- The assignments send her to the Pamirs and Rogachev to Sakhalin.
