On this week's episode of Gladio Free Europe, we ventured back into the Soviet period to talk about the 1966 film "Beware of the Car." Directed by Eldar Ryazanov (one of my favorite Soviet directors and somebody whose work we will be returning to in the near future I hope!), Beware of the Car is a satire of the film noir genre which tells the story of a socialist Soviet Robin Hood of sorts, a man who works as an insurance salesman by day and who steals cars by night. For what purpose? Guess you'll have to watch the film/listen to the episode to find out!

In addition to discussing the film itself, we get into some of the cultural context that you would need to understand the Soviet Union of this period. We talk about the ever-looming problem of consumer good shortages, the means that were used to remedy them, and the corruption that these workarounds bred, often with the effect of exacerbating the initial problem! Beware of the Car, like many of Ryazanov's other films, could be understood to be part of a larger project of exposing the dark underbelly of Soviet reality, often whitewashed in the official discourse, for the purpose of bringing the socialist dream to fruition by punishing wrongdoers. As simple and perhaps naive as this may sound, watching Ryazanov's films you really get the sense that he was a strong believer in the Soviet project and hoped to make a positive impact by creating films for the masses which were both entertaining and served a larger didactic moral purpose.

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