Il romanzo di un ladro di cavalli

"Romance of a Horsethief" is a marvelous, little-known gem that, unfortunately, appears to have been transferred to DVD from a badly degraded VHS recording. The sound especially is terrible, sounding like static when the volume passes even a moderate level. What a shame. I would like to think somewhere there is a quality studio transfer that could do this movie justice. The video also suffers. It isn't the worst I have ever seen, but "Horsethief" deserves better.

Obviously the reviewers here who say that Lainie Kazan stole the movie are men (one even noting her "twin weapons of mass destruction", etc.) She was good, an asset to the film, but it's obvious these men are ogling at a beautiful sexy body and their minds say, "She's the best thing in it!" :-D The scene stealers, if you ask me, a woman, are Yul Brynner and Eli Wallach, and my opinion is not influenced by their masculine assets! They were simply two excellent veteran actors chewing up the scenery as they usually did. This 1971 movie was not the first time Brynner and Wallach starred together; the first was the excellent 1960 Western "The Magnificent Seven". And of course, they were the standouts in that one as well.

I agree with a couple of reviewers who noted "Romance of a Horsethief" would have made a good musical, ala "Fiddler on the Roof". As a matter of fact, I thought of "Fiddler" as I watched "Horsethief". The setting and the mood, atmosphere, etc., even the title, would lend itself to musical numbers well.

If you can get your hands on a copy of this movie, you won't be sorry as far as the movie itself is concerned, if you can manage to look past the bad audio and middling video quality.

It's hard to make a judgment on a film that you might want to say is far better than it appears. But the DVD I saw of Romance Of A Horsethief had the most horrible sound quality, one of the worst I ever heard with a film that had some justifiable reasons to consider it good. I must have missed any number of witticisms that came from Joseph and David Opatoshu, the father and son original creators of the work.

The same rueful acceptance, the same cynicism that characterized Fiddler On The Roof without the joyous music is found in Romance Of A Horsethief. It's 1904 and the Czarist armies are needing cavalry horses for the upcoming war with Japan which ironically enough turned out to be a naval war. So it's not like the American west where the cavalry actually bought and paid for mounts and cavalry horses became the fulcrum of many a western good and bad. No, in an absolute monarchy the Czar merely requisitions what he needs from the peasants be they Christian or Jew. Stealing from both you would think might get them to thinking we have a common enemy, but that fact takes a long time in realization.

Yul Brynner is the Cossack commander sent to the Russian part of occupied Poland whose job it is to run that part of Poland and get the Czar's horses. Eli Wallach is the amiable horse-thief whose profession has found a new status of honor he never expected in his life. He becomes a revolutionary in spite of himself.

Romance Of A Horsethief almost could have been a musical, there are places some numbers could have been dropped. Best in the cast is Lainie Kazan who makes quite the fool of Brynner the occupier. Who could resist Lainie's twin weapons of mass destruction?

A really bad sound quality keeps this last work of Abraham Polonsky from being a classic.

It's safe to assume that, even among casual film buffs, the fate of Abraham Polonsky is arguably better known than his actual cinematic works are since his is arguably the most notorious case of the impact that the Red Scare/HUAC hearings of the late 1940s had on a promising Hollywood career. After writing the seminal boxing drama BODY AND SOUL (1947), Polonsky stepped into the director's chair for the first (and, for the next 21 years, only) directorial effort with the marvelous noir FORCE OF EVIL (1948); incidentally, both these movies starred an even more fatal casualty of that Communist purge, John Garfield – who died a mere 4 years later at just 39 years of age. The political climate in Hollywood changed over the years and, by the end of the 1960s, Polonsky was able to officially work again, both as writer – on Don Siegel's MADIGAN (1968) – and, more importantly, as a director – on the acclaimed Revisionist Western TELL THEM WILLIE BOY IS HERE (1969) and the much lighter ROMANCE OF A HORSETHIEF. As it turned out, Polonsky's directorial stint still proved short-lived as he was advised, for medical reasons, not to undertake any more strenuous projects! Equally ironic is the fact that, while on the Italian-language TV print I watched the opening credits clearly state that one is about to see "an Abraham Polonsky film", the actual credited director has an unpronounceable Yugoslavian name!!

On original release, the film under review seems to have been quite well-received by critics but the public stayed away and, while this may have surprised Polonsky himself, in hindsight I'd say it was just too old-fashioned and inconsequential for its own good. Or perhaps it was simply overshadowed by Norman Jewison's 3-hour musical FIDDLER ON THE ROOF (1971) – which similarly deals with the trials and tribulations of Jewish Poles in a war-torn society in a light-hearted fashion. The cast list was certainly impressive: Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, David Opatoshu (who also penned the script based on his father's novel), Henri Serre, Jane Birkin, Serge Gainsbourg, Oliver Tobias (his first starring role) and Marilu' Tolo. But it's Lainie Kazan who steals the show as the lusty, busty brothel madam who seduces Russian Captain Brynner to keep him away from his duty of pursuing her intended, horsethief Wallach; the sequence where cross-dressed Wallach and Tobias attempt to spring three horses hidden inside the brothel unbeknownst to drunken Brynner is the film's comic highlight. Meanwhile, peasant Opatoshu's son Tobias romances wealthy liberal Birkin who, in turn, is engaged to clumsy French gentleman (Gainsbourg, who else?). This enjoyable but ultimately unsubstantial film also boasts a fine score by Mort Shuman and attractive cinematography by Piero Portalupi.

I'm at a loss to see how "unsubstantial" is a negative value in a comedy. Possibly the previous reviewer was more interested in director Polonsky's story than the movie.

I have always loved this film. It's one of those humanistic little gems like "Going In Style," "The Trouble With Harry'"and "Bye, Bye, Braverman." I first saw the film in 1971 and have remembered it with pleasure ever since. Fair warning: the DVD is a poor quality transfer, apparently from a VHS, with no digital enhancements. But the film is a delight and well worth your time. Lainie Kazan does, indeed, steal the show but Yul Brynner gives his Cossack a touch of gentle sadness in one of his rare restrained performances, while still offering a necessary bravado. Eli Wallach is excellent and David Opatashu displays great comic timing in the (very satisfying) finale as he impersonates a Cossack Inpector General.

Eli Wallach steals horses from the army's herds. The army steals horses from everyone else. David Opatoshu sells horses he knows he doesn't have so his sister can have a dowry and make a good marriage; and hot revolutionary Jane Birkin wears a white lace dress to a secret meeting in a muddy field -- I suppose the servants will clean it. This movie doesn't seem to me a story so much as a slice of life, and its contradictory absurdities less funny than the sort of disorganized thinking that comes with the Us-Against-Them mentality, reflected in the set design and trying to sneak a stolen horse out of a brothel by having Lainie Kazan expose her decolletage to Yul Brynner.

This absurd and old-fashioned comedy about Cossacks and Jews might have been a minor success played by the Yiddisher Bund in Warsaw in 1935 (my grandfather's second wife would have had fun in the Lainie Kazan role), or on 2nd Avenue in New York. By 1971, if the audience wanted to see something about Jews in Tsarist Russia, they could see FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, which was a lot more approachable.