Strictly Business

Three separate stories in one film: a bandit who shoots his partner after a robbery, a burglar who climbs in to rob a sleeping man and discovers they share an affliction, and two grifters who kidnap a rich man's boy and make the mistake of their lives. The film is not interested in crime. It is interested in bargaining. In all three parts somebody does a calculation and the calculation turns against them; in the last one the kidnappers agree to pay money in order to give the child back. The form is close to silent comedy: few lines, plenty of gesture, and a rhythm built out of short episodes. The source is three O. Henry stories: The Roads We Take, Makes the Whole World Kin and The Ransom of Red Chief. Leonid Gaidai made this before his own great comedies, which means the most-watched comedy director in Soviet cinema built his style by adapting an American short-story writer. Vladlen Paulus, Aleksandr Shvorin and Viktor Gromov star. The film is in black and white. Who it is for: readers of O. Henry, and anyone curious about short-story adaptations and older Soviet comedy. Who it is not for: viewers who want a single story. The three parts are not connected, and the first two look pale beside the third.