The stylish Soviet comedy Protsess o tryokh millionakh is an adaptation of the Italian stage play The Three Thieves by Umberto Notari (1878-1950), a Bologna-born journalist and author of some notoriety. Notari had himself adapted the play from his 1907 novel of the same name. The three thieves in question are the small-time crook Tapioca, the debonair, roguish gentleman thief Cascarilla, and the ruthless banker Ornano. The film’s title refers meanwhile to the money Ornano makes on a house sale, which serves as the MacGuffin for the comic events that subsequently unfold. Exterior locations in Yalta make a credible substitute for Italy. Yet, while the setting is obvious, it is not explicitly revealed in the film, two intertitles at the beginning and end coyly referring to it taking place “in a certain kingdom, in a certain bourgeois state”. Director Yakov Protazanov (1881- 1945) had been one of the pre-eminent filmmakers in pre-Revolutionary Russia. During the Civil War, he fled to France, but returned to Moscow in 1923 at the behest of film producer Moisei Aleinikov, founder of the privately run Mezhrabpom-Rus studio. Protazanov’s first Soviet film, the allegorical sci-fi political thriller Aelita (1924), is his best known work thanks in no small part to its iconic constructivist set design by Isaak Rabinovich (who also worked on Protsess o tryokh millionakh). Zakroyshchik iz Torzhka (The Tailor from Torzhok, 1925) marked the first in a series of satirical comedies by Protazanov that starred the popular comic actor Igor Ilyinsky (who plays Tapioca in Protsess o tryokh millionakh, a role he had previously played on stage) alongside Anatoly Ktorov (who plays Cascarilla). The pair also star in Protazanov’s last silent film, Prazdnik svyatogo Yorgena (St. Jorgen’s Day, 1930), a biting critique of organised religion. Although (unjustly) derided by contemporary Soviet critics, like most of Protazanov’s Soviet films Protsess o tryokh millionakh proved popular with audiences.

Oliver Hanley