The Thief
In the aftermath of World War II in Russia, the widowed Katya (Ekaterina
Rednikova), whose husband has been killed in battle, believes her troubles are
over when she meets the handsome, cocky soldier Tolyan (Vladimir Mashkov)
during a train ride. Her six-year-old son, Sanya (Misha Philipchuk), is jealous
and suspicious, but a feverish Katya succumbs to romance. The three of them
move into an already crowded collective apartment, and soon Tolyan's real
nature of is revealed: he's the thief of the film's title, who steals
pitilessly from those who take him in. He's also an exponent of tough love,
forcing meek little Sanya to punch out at the students at school who abuse him.
Tolyan is a bad guy, but he's also alluring in his meanness, just like Joseph
Stalin, whose face he has tattoo'd on his body. Pavel Chukrai's film is
a political allegory of a sort, and there are also overt Hamlet
allusions: the boy's ghostly father appears dreamlike and asks for his death to
be avenged. So Tolyan is not only a Stalin stand-in but also Hamlet's
fratricidal and usurping uncle Claudius. That's too much symbolism for what is
essentially a modest, well-told melodrama. The Thief's chief attraction
(and probably the reason it got American distribution) is Philipchuk's winning,
blue-eyed little boy. At the Avon and Jane Pickens
-- Gerald Peary
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