The thief must be in prison This film by Pavel Chukhrai is one of three films that were nominated for an Oscar in the category of best foreign film. I am talking only about the Russian period, I do not take into account the USSR. I had a certain feeling about this film before I watched it. The Oscars just wouldn't be nominated, so I was expecting something special. And I got it: a very life story in conjunction with some inner experiences of a little boy, against the background of a very robbery plot.
In the autumn of 1952, six-year-old Sanka and his young mother meet a handsome military man named Tolyan on a train. Katya falls in love with Tolyana, and together they begin to live as a family. But in fact, this brave and charming officer is not a retired military officer, but a professional thief.
Against the background of such a seemingly simple plot, we are shown a whole range of internal experiences of the voiceover of a young boy, and the voice behind the scenes belongs to him already at a fairly mature age. As I said, the story here is not intricate. Tolyan, with the complete resistance of his new friend Katya, robs communal apartments to somehow feed himself. After all, all this happens in Stalin’s time, and no matter how much they drank to him, they still considered him a tyrant in their hearts. The culmination of all this story was, of course, one of the last frames of the film. He turns the whole understanding of the film on its head. If in the beginning it was possible to sympathize with Tolyan, and somehow worry for him, then, strangely, by the end of the film this feeling is greatly enhanced and it is impossible without some longing and sadness, some even with tears in their eyes, to look at the departing train, even though the image of a seemingly good thief, so carefully created by Chukhrai, would literally be scattered in a couple of minutes. But still, the main theme of the film, in my opinion, is not that during the years of Stalin’s repressions, people earned as much as they could, but in the courage of an individual who is able to defend his honor and the honor of his loved ones, even despite the great pain in his heart. All this is expressed in the image of the boy Sasha. Two major roles have been played. Vladimir Mashkov and Ekaterina Rednikova. I especially remember the image of Mashkov. With such cold blood, he robbed these communal houses. Such an unshakable image that combines both love for Katya, for Sasha, and complete serenity, anger at the whole world. Even though Mashkov has always been an image of a militant actor for me, he played a wonderful drama in this film.
I would say that this film was nominated for an Oscar. Too bad he never got the statue. Very good, both in semantic and simply in everyday terms, as a description of the life of those difficult times for our country. Original