Stealing Cars in the USSR during the 1960s: The Film "Beware the Car," or "Uncommon Thief," or "Watch Out for the Automobile."

 

Confined to the house because of our snow and deep freeze in Southwest Ohio, I decided to watch Amazon Prime car films. I was totally shocked by the first one I chose, "Watch Out for the Automobile," a movie about an idiosyncratic car thief in Moscow during the mid-1960s. You can find much information on the film on the Internet Film database, and on the car (a GAZ 21) at Wikipedia. 

Since memorable scenes focus on our unassuming car thief Yuri behind the wheel of a stolen GAZ 21, I thought it appropriate to feature the interior of this model of car, made between 1956 and 1970 in three iterations. Featuring a 2.5 liter side valve engine and made at the Gorky Automobile Factory, it was similar to American cars of the 1950s and prized by Soviet bureaucrats and elites.

I saw this film as quite different than American auto theft films of the period, however.  First, it clearly took a peek at what life was like in the USSR -- values, materialism, deceit, and aspirations. As remarked in beginning of the film, "Everyone wants a car, but once they get it they want to get rid of it." Yuri steals cars (5 of them), sells them on a black market, then gives the proceeds to orphanages. He uses very clever methods, including oil  on rusty hinges to eliminate the noise when opening a garage, and a crane to pick up a garage! He is a friend to the inspector who is pursing him, and an actor at ta community theater but his best role is in disarming people as he goes about his crimes. He is in love with a pretty woman who drives a tram, has a wonderful loving mother, and not an ounce of violence in his heart. But he has a great distain for hypocrisy and corruption.

This car theft film looks inwardly into a society while telling a rather funny story. I am not sure that American films of the era do that. "Gone in 60 Seconds" tell us more about the cars than the people of the values of our society at the time, values that also are centered on hypocrisy.  It seems that greed,  selfishness, and Social Darwinism have no national boundaries, but our hero Yuri has an uncommon heart to do good