Criterion's Eclipse releases films that the curators feel have been unjustly neglected. About half the time, or maybe a third, I think they're right; the rest in my opinion fall into the "justly neglected" category -- but, a worthy endeavor, and of course one man's stinker is another's masterwork.
The Eclipse re-release of Shepitova's 1966 Wings is one of the good ones -- very good indeed. Celebrated WWII pilot Nadia Petrukhina (Maya Bulgakova) finds herself, twenty years later, principal of a vocational college and provincial Soviet functionary. Like Fellini's protagonists in il Bidone and Dolce Vita, she is discovering, unwillingly, that her inner life has shrivelled. Bulgakova is in almost every shot: she has the face, and she is enough of an actress, to carry the film, brilliantly -- you can't take your eyes off her.
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