Autumnal Yearnings and ‘Seventeen Moments of Spring’

Replace James Bond’s technological marvels, swinging music, and sparkling exotic settings with damp forests, lyrical music, and a hero who pensively watches wild cranes in flight (for quite a bit), and you get “Seventeen Moments of Spring” (1973), undeservedly very little-known outside the former USSR, where it was one of the most popular series of all time. The man? Standartenführer Max von Stirlitz (alias Maxim Isaev), a clever Soviet agent long-embedded in Germany’s foreign intelligence. The mission? To find out if the Nazis are secretly negotiating with Western Allies (based on the 1954 Bern incident) and make sure a separate peace doesn’t take place – all while escaping suspicion from within the SS. The magic? That it might be the slowest, most thoughtful, emotional espionage thriller you might ever see, full of heavy dialogue and heavier silences (during which you often find yourself holding your breath, desperately hoping things will turn out well).

The plot is intricate and suspenseful with taut, powerful moments, but its wandering pace and layered structure help give it a rich, nuanced view on peoples and nations, longing and belonging (there and then as well as here and now). The dedicated Stirlitz is also an odd kind of super agent, more like a stoic Victorian professor than the stylish high-living playboy most of us expect (although he looks painfully good in his dark uniforms). Played with sublime restraint by the great Vyacheslav Tikhonov, he is soft-spoken and detached, mostly kind to old ladies and dogs (and very much missing his wife). He only engages in relatively mild onscreen violence twice, otherwise relying on his cerebral powers and strategies (sometimes as implausible as Bond’s physical escapes but just as exciting), and naps (tiring work). Like Bond, Stirlitz is as much a beloved icon as he is ripe for parody (I hate to say it but the Russian Stirlitz jokes can be very funny), but if you are patient and give this a try, you’ll come out wistfully missing his daydreaming escapades Xo

*My title for this post borrows from Theo Stephanides’ Corfu memoirs, with much schoolgirl love and devotion! Also, one day when I make it back to school I'll get to write something longer, more about things like Stagnation-era framing and how even Tikhonov's nostrils are in character, but this is a good start :')