The detective-adventure genre has always been one of the most popular among the mass audience. According to classical canons, the history of a crime is usually viewed from the point of view of honest people and investigators who disclose it. However, in order to understand the psychology of a killer or a thief, it is useful to look at the world around us through the eyes of the offender. It is to this task that the best films about thieves are dedicated, especially those that operate as part of organized criminal structures.
Hierarchy - a sign of both the state and the mafia
Each effective management system has a clearly defined vertically oriented structure. In the lower and most numerous part are ordinary performers, above them are the commanders of the lower level, then the middle level, and even higher - the elite, consisting of the elect. The final decision, as a rule, is made by the most important one.
This is how the army is organized, otherwise it will not be combat-ready. Any ministry and department works on the same principle. State power functions in the same way. And criminal organizations are no exception.
Theme of crime syndicates in foreign cinema
The life of mafia clans is one of the most interesting topics for writers. Mario Puzo, creating his novel about the fate of the godfather, described in detail the management structure adopted in almost all American criminal syndicates created by immigrants from Italy. The Jewish mafia of the thirties and forties is depicted in the movie Once Upon a Time in America. There are other films about thieves in law operating abroad. So, the theme of the organized underground trade in alcohol during the Prohibition was revealed by the old film “The Fate of a Soldier in America,” shot in the thirties of the last century.
How about us?
But it's all overseas. We are also interested. The organization of criminal structures has been the subject of many films about thieves in law and ordinary criminals who, with varying degrees of reliability, describe the rules that prevailed in their midst, both in places of detention and in freedom. One of the first was the picture of Vasily Shukshin “Kalina red”, in which the fate of the authoritative criminal named “Woe”, who decided to break with the criminal past and become an honest person, tragically develops.
It should be noted that there is a significant difference between the Italian, Irish, Jewish, Japanese and other ethnic criminal structures and the so-called “Russian mafia”. It consists in the degree of subordination and obedience of its individual members to their commanders. If the leader of Cosa Nostra orders someone from the lower mafiosi to kill at least his own relative, he will obey implicitly. You should not expect such obedience from our bandit, and as a rule, he will not kiss anyone on the ring.
Who are thieves in law?
In tsarist Russia, such a concept did not exist. The thief was just a thief. In the twenties and thirties, many bold social experiments were carried out in the USSR, during which the task was to change the nature of social relations that had developed over centuries. The first Soviet films about thieves in law were documentary; they were shot at the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal and in the special camp on the Solovetsky Islands. Criminals with mottled tattoos showed their willingness to work hard for a "new life." Then the term “socially close element” appeared as a contrast to “counter”, which is impossible to re-educate.
Thieves Documents
The idea of ​​using forced labor came from Naftaly Frenkel, who himself was serving his sentence in Solovki, and she liked I.V. To Stalin. Organizational measures alone were clearly not enough to organize work and increase discipline, and overseers from among the "socially close" who could not work were put on ordinary prisoners.
Among the numerous episodes of the documentary series The Investigation Conducted, there are films about thieves in law that appeared exactly then, in tragic and crucial decades. This is the story of the creator of the Gulag, Frenkel, and the story of Vasya Brilliant, who ended his life under mysterious circumstances in the colony "White Swan". The history of this phenomenon is rich in events: these are “bitch wars” that took place in the camps in the post-war years, and the change in many fundamental concepts that took place in the perestroika decades.
Doc the film “Thieves in Law, or Life Failed” is an attempt, and in many ways successful, to explain to Russian and foreign viewers the specific features of domestic organized crime. In order to understand the mechanisms of its activities, you must first find out by what rules it operates and where it comes from. The heroes of the film were Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov (“Taiwanchik”), Leonid Bilunov (“Macintosh”) and the creator of this work.
The criminal community is like a “state in a state”, and various processes take place in it, power structures are re-elected, “siloviki” are reorganized, and sometimes revolutions take place, as in the nineties.
Feature film about crime
In addition to documentaries, the subject of domestic crime was also interested in the directors of the game cinema. In the second half of the eighties, many topics that were previously forbidden became quite acceptable and even desired.
Pre-perestroika Soviet films about authorities and thieves were characterized by a sharp social orientation, declaring an implacable attitude towards all violators of the norms of public life. The main character in them was always a police officer (sometimes state security), and it was around his personality that the main storyline developed. The experiences of the offender, as a rule, were not covered. This was both the strengths and weaknesses of domestic cinema.
The Soviet cinema audience knew much more about the Italian or American mafia than about the domestic one, and this informational vacuum required filling. In 1988, the director Yuri Kara took off the thin. the film "Thieves in Law". The credits indicate that the tape was shot based on the stories of the remarkable writer Fazil Iskander. Readers who managed to fall in love with the works of this outstanding writer were somewhat disappointed with the shift in emphasis. Instead of a story about human drama, they saw the relishing of the “chic life” of criminals, which, however, ended tragically.
It was one of the first films on this subject. Further development led to many TV shows and feature films that tell with varying degrees of reliability about the fate of criminals, sometimes romanticizing them unjustifiably.