Dorogoy tsenoy

Also known as At Great Cost, this adaptation of a story by Mikhailo Kotsyubinsky--a Ukrainian writer executed in the Stalinist purges but rehabilitated in 1955--anticipates the wave of Sixties poetic cinema in its focus on star-crossed lovers and its celebration of nature. Set in the 1930s, the film begins as Solomia is forced into an arranged marriage. She escapes with her lover, Ostep, and for a while it looks as if the fugitives will make a clean getaway. (KG)