Dead Man's Letters (1986) on Netflix
After the nuclear apocalypse, Professor Larsen takes shelter in a museum cellar with his sick wife Anna and writes letters to his missing son Eric, who may be dead.
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- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.5/104,730 votes
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Trailer
Plot summary
A nuclear war has left a Western city a radioactive ruin. Professor Larsen, a Nobel laureate in physics, lives in the cellar of a ruined museum with his wife Anna, who is ill from radiation, and other employees. He writes letters to his son Eric, with no way to send them or to learn whether he is alive. Larsen is convinced the war has ended and that people survive beyond the central bunker; the others disagree. At an orphanage, the caretaker plans to evacuate to the central bunker, and the children, traumatized into withdrawal, may not be allowed to go with her. Larsen learns his age may bar him as well. With Anna suffering from radiation sickness, he slips past military patrols during curfew to seek medicine.
Cast
- Vyacheslav Vasilyevas Dosimetrist
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Dead Man's Letters (1986)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The patronage of Anatoly Gromyko, a historian and USSR Academy of Sciences member who was the son of Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko, enabled Lenfilm's 1986 production of the first portrayal of the aftermath of nuclear war in Soviet cinema.
- Strict censorship in the Soviet Union caused a three-year waiting period for Konstantin Lopushansky and his crew, filled with repeated rewrites, possibly because co-writer Vyacheslav Rybakov was involved with anti-Soviet literature and had run-ins with the KGB.
- Dead Man's Letters was shot in monochrome, the film stock tinted to resemble the greenish look of scenes in Stalker, in order to give the film a more foreboding atmosphere.
