Lady with the Dog

Lady with the Dog (1960) is Soviet director Iosif Kheifits's adaptation of Anton Chekhov's short story — watch it online on iFILM. Iia Savvina and Alexei Batalov play two unhappily married people who meet at a Crimean resort and cannot leave each other behind.

Gurov has always treated seaside affairs as sport. The quiet woman he spots walking a small white dog along the Yalta promenade seems like another brief distraction. Something about this one is different. When both return to their separate households — to spouses, routines, and the lives they had accepted — the story does not end there. That is where it actually begins.

Kheifits shoots the whole thing at a low temperature that mirrors Chekhov's prose: no raised voices, no crying scenes. Savvina made her screen debut here, and she brings to Anna a kind of bruised stillness that is nearly impossible to teach. Stream Lady with the Dog (1960) online on iFILM.