Hagyjállógva Vászka is a burlesque picaresque novel, a fairy-tale narrative and also a satire on the Soviet era that ended such a short time ago. The folklorist story is by Mariana Koziryeva, who heard it from her father Lev Gordon (writer, poet, critic), who in turn heard it in a prison camp during construction of the White Sea Canal.Two charming types fly over the roof of the National Bank in St Petersburg: Vaska, the urban thief and Vanyka, the notorious country robber. With the Bloody-Sardine-Key, a magic can opener they found in the nest of a faded vulture, they make a hole in the roof of the National Bank. They empty all the safety deposit boxes and take all the people’s things. Angry Comrade Zinoviev, his trusty soldiers and even the wise ‘forefather’ of Russian criminals, the ancient Fedya, are led astray by the couple. The despotic Soviet bureaucrats are in despair because even their most ingenious efforts have no effect.The wayward director Péter Gothár, whose film The Outpost was screened at Rotterdam last year, manages to tell a bizarre story in many styles. The scenes with the evil genius Zinoviev and his men were shot in a forbidding and scratched black & white, in the other scenes the camera dances a cheerful waltz around the two crooks and their friend Luvnia.
