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Russian actor Alexey Batalov, known for the 1957 Cannes winning film The Cranes are Flying and the 1980 Oscar-winning movie Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears, died in Moscow on June 14 at the age of 88, Russian news agency TASS reported on Thursday, quoting the actor's personal assistant.

Batalov was born in the Central Russian city of Vladimir on November 20, 1928, into the family of actors of the Moscow Art Theatre (MKHAT).In 1950, he graduated from the Moscow Art Theatre's Acting Studio-School and joined the theater's troupe.

This letter is part of "Behind the Celluloid Curtain," a series of correspondences between Scout Tafoya and Veronika Ferdman on the topic of Soviet cinema, with each series organized around a theme. This particular series focuses on love in a time of discontent.Dear Scout,Those Soviets are really unlucky in love, aren’t they? At any period of time and age—from the star-crossed adult lovers of the 1800s of The Lady with the Dog to the summer campers in their early to mid-teens in One Hundred Days After Childhood (for which director Sergei Solovyov won the Silver Bear fat the Berlinale in 1975)—love has never saved anyone, or cleared the cobwebs out of eyes and minds. Not when there are such big pressures—whether the general malaise brought on by social misalignment of July Rain and Lady with the Dog, or the struggle to find the value and...

This is the first letter in the first series of what will be an ongoing installment of correspondences between Scout Tafoya and Veronika Ferdman on the topic of Soviet cinema. Each series will be organized around a theme—director, genre, time period, mood or more whimsical connectors such as color or season. In short, the writers reserve the right to let Soviet cinema be their muse and guide the orientation of the letter writing. For this inaugural dispatch from the celluloid wonders of the Soviet bloc the subject can best be described as love in a time of discontent.Dear Veronika,I’m excited to be writing to you about the many, many undiscovered, unsung gems hiding in the vast canon of Russian cinema. There’s so much to cover that it’s frankly a little overwhelming to me. A whole world of movies I’ve never heard of just waiting to be watched.

Fifty years ago, the Palme d'Or winner at Cannes was Fellini's "La Dolce Vita." More every year I realize that it was the film of my lifetime. But indulge me while I list some more titles.

The other entries in the official competition included "Ballad of a Soldier," by Grigori Chukhrai; "Lady with a Dog," by Iosif Kheifits; "Home from the Hill," by Vincente Minnelli; "The Virgin Spring," by Ingmar Bergman;" "Kagi," by Kon Ichikawa; "L'Avventura," by Michelangelo Antonioni; "Le Trou," by Jacques Becker; "Never on Sunday," by Jules Dassin; "Sons and Lovers," by Jack Cardiff; "The Savage Innocents," by Nicholas Ray, and "The Young One," by Luis Bunuel.

And many more. But I am not here at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival to mourn the present and praise the past.

Cannes is still the most important annual event in the world of what some of us consider good cinema. The...