Thieves Like Us 4K 1974

Altman has left almost nothing from the original 1940s movie, except for the love story, which, unlike Ray, is devoid of romance. In order to achieve a truly stunning psychologism and total realism, the director invites only those performers who are devoid of distinctive features: so Shelley Duvall (it was she who would later star in Kubrick's “The Shining”) gives the impression of a simple, ugly, insecure girl (some aesthetes and connoisseurs of female beauty, she will be considered even ugly). In a similar way, other actors create bulging characters of average people, who will not be noticed in the crowd (except that Keith Carradine may make an impression of a handsome man). To conceptually contrast the unsightly prose of life with the false romance and heroism, Altman makes extensive use of 1930s radio broadcasts, in which everything from a play based on “Romeo and Juliet” and announcements of new films to pathos-laden speeches by American politicians is treated as a drug for the masses, used to alleviate their suffering during the Great Depression.

At the time, “Thieves Like Us”, which could well have been called “People Like Us”, was by far Altman's most powerful picture, at least it was here that the criticism of the American way of life, bourgeoisie and cruelty looked the most convincing (what is the bloody finale alone, quoting Arthur Pena's “Bonnie and Clyde”). Altman has not yet found his style here, his pictures have not yet become panoramic, but the deepening of socio-political criticism is more visible here than ever before. The story of bank robbers who escaped from prison and continued their way of life on the outside could have become a stereotypical film for the masses with the heroization of gangsters, romantic love story and the final triumph of law and justice, if it was not for Altman. However, we are dealing with one of the best representatives of auteur cinema of Hollywood, for whom the life truth and desacralization of film myths - the subject of creativity.

Once again, as in “McCabe and Mrs. Miller”, we see shabby, old buildings, almost poor people, even up to a certain point the robberies and murders themselves remain off-screen, that is, the director does everything to go against the canons of the genre, against the fascination, action, everything that can entertain the audience. Moreover, Altman also refuses to romanticize individualism, private opposition to the system; his film shows that it is impossible to reform it, but private rebellion against it is also absurd. “Thieves Like Us” - also the darkest tape Oltmena at the time: faded, gray tones, predominant in the atmospheric and restrained camerawork of Jean Boffety, should also express the powerlessness of man before the system of socio-economic relations of the 1930s. The absence of music and the slightest lyrical lucidity add to the depressing impression.

Ironically, the most beloved Hollywood director in the USSR was Stanley Kramer, with his head-on social-agitpics “denouncing the bourgeois system”. However, it seems to me that Altman's far more complex, multi-layered cinematography, also engaged, one might say, in criticizing the American mentality itself, even, and not just political exposés. Especially today, when the spread of the American way of life around the world (with the ubiquitous famous brand of cola, which in “Thieves Like Us” is drunk by literally everyone) has significantly leveled cultural differences, Robert Altman's films are even more relevant.