Dama S Sobachkoy (aka The Lady With The Dog) (1960)

Vacationing in the coastal town of Yalta, a married banker (Aleksey Batalov) sees a woman (Iya Sawina) walking her pet dog. He pursues her despite the fact that she is also married and expecting her husband (Panteleymon Krymov) to join her. The affair seems to affect her more than it does him and they part to return to their spouses. But when he returns to Moscow, he finds that his life has been changed forever. Based on the short story by Anton Chekhov, this is a beauty of a film. The film remains quite faithful to the Chekhov source material right down to the unresolved ending. Adultery has been common fodder in cinema since the silent era and even when it's handled sensitively as in David Lean's BRIEF ENCOUNTER, there's almost always a touch of romanticism, the lovers who can never be together and must part for the good of others etc. But Iosif Kheifits' film is far from romantic and painful to the extreme. There's just no way out. Dialogue is kept to a minimum and at times the movie is reminiscent of great silent cinema, thanks to handsome B&W cinematography of Dmitriy Meskhiev and Andrei Moskvin.