heist – Page 3 – The Magnificent 60s

Modesty Blaise (1966) ***

You might well enjoy this if a) you are in a very good mood, b) you love psychedelia, Pop Art and the Swinging Sixties, c) you fancy a spy film spoof or more likely d) you are a big fan of one or all concerned. Otherwise, you might be well advised to steer clear because it either takes the mickey out of a number of genres, not just espionage, or plays merry hell with narrative and character and is only loosely based on the source material by Peter O’Donnell.

Bear in mind it originated in a comic strip – later turned into a series of novels – that had more in common with the likes of Danger: Diabolik than the more straightlaced adventures emanating from DC Comics or Marvel. In particular, Modesty had a neat habit of distracting the villains by appearing topless in moments of crisis – a trick adopted in movies like 100 Rifles (1969) and El Condor (1970).

Fans of the comic strip/book may have been left indignant by the audacity of the filmmakers to introduce romance between Modesty and her sidekick Willie Gavin since in the book their relationship was strictly platonic. There was no place, in either comic strip or book, for the musical numbers that pepper the movie. And – check out The Swinger (1966) – for the notion of a character acting out a fictionalized version of herself.

You should be aware that Modesty is a very rich version of the gentleman sleuth, an idea that belonged to the old school, of a person, such as The Saint, bored with wealth, who takes on dangerous assignments in the eternal battle between good and evil.

Anyways, on with the story.

Modesty Blaise (Monica Vitti) is hired by the British government in the shape of MI5 chief Sir Gerald Tarrant (Harry Andrews), in return for immunity for her previous crimes, to deliver a secret shipment of diamonds, part-payment for oil imports, to Sheik Abu Tahir (Clive Revill). Modesty happens to be the sheik’s adopted daughter. Meanwhile, criminal mastermind Gabriel (Dirk Bogarde), believed to be dead, has his eyes on the consignment.

Meanwhile (again), Modesty upsets current lover Hagen (Michael Craig), Tarrant’s aide, by hooking up with old flame Willie Garvin (Terence Stamp). Meanwhile (again again), Garvin hooks up with another of his old flames, magician’s assistant Nicole (Tina Marquand), who has information on Gabriel.

Various assassins employing a variety of methods are sent to kill Modesty so a good chunk of the picture is her avoiding her demise. Gabriel is a pretty touchy employer, so upset by failure that he assigns his Amazonian bodyguard Mrs Fothergill (Rosella Falk) to eliminate all such assassins. Gabriel, however, is something of a contradiction, very sensitive to violence. And just in case you are not keeping up with the plot, conveniently, the bulk of the conversations between Tarrant and his superior (Alexander Knox) will fill you in.

Through a whole bunch of clever maneuvers on Gabriel’s part, Modesty and Willie are forced to steal the diamonds themselves. And, meanwhile, Hagen is on their tail, infuriated at being jilted.

In between the umpteen shifts in plot, which basically lurches like a ship in a storm, the screen is ablaze with color. Nobody complained much when Raquel Welch found it necessary to change her bikini ever few seconds, or that a musical required continuous costume changes, and Modesty here seems to have fallen into the same pattern, the changes in outfit often so swift you imagine she has a disorder.

And be warned, this is a poster film for Pop Art, so if it’s not clothes that are being swapped, it’s décor. You might put Terence Stamp’s blond barnet in the discordant category. You can’t really complain about the plot because espionage storylines are usually something of a conjuring trick with the impossible little more than a standard mission. There’s much to enjoy if you’re of a mind and subscribe to one of the four ideas outlined in the opening paragraph and like the idea of the otherwise critical darling Joseph Losey (Accident, 1967) giving way to stylistic overkill.

Monica Vitti (Girl with a Pistol, 1968) inhabits the role with the necessary verve though Terence Stamp (The Collector, 1963) looks as if he has walked into a spoof and Dirk Bogarde (H.M.S. Defiant / Damn the Defiant!) appears still in experimental mode, having dumped the British matinee idol, unsure of what his screen persona should be. Evan Jones (Funeral in Berlin, 1966) is generally to be blamed/praised for the screenplay.

A movie for which the word confection was invented.

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) *****

Employs Hitchcock’s trick of having you rooting for the bad guy. The caper picture remade. Steve McQueen (Nevada Smith, 1966) reinvented. Faye Dunaway (The Extraordinary Seaman, 1969) making the most stunning entrance this side of Ursula Andress in Dr No (1962). The technological dream of the split screen. Film noir filmed in bright sunshine with a femme fatale on the right side, only just, of the law.

Takes the insurance agent of Psycho (1960) and switches the gender. Nabs the Hitchcock crown (Notorious, 1942) for the longest screen kiss. Steals from Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal, 1957) the title of best chess scene.

Female sleuth at a time when I don’t think the idea of a female detective crossed anyone’s minds in Hollywood. And one so sexy, stylish and uber-confident that she attracts not one sexist remark. Not dumb enough either like Lila in Psycho to walk into a trap.

And, incredibly, given wealth has been a movie trope since day one, luxuriates in a lifestyle – gliders, dune buggies, polo – never seen before. Not just a mesmerising song (“The Windmills of Your Mind”) but an absolutely outstanding score from Michel Legrand (Play Dirty, 1968). Almost works as a visual greatest hits collection, one memorable scene after another, a cat-and-mouse scenario, twists aplenty and smart, smart dialog.

Ignores back story and dark hidden secrets. Dispenses with the usual robbery cliches of planning the heist and the robbers irritating the hell out of each other. Theft here is carried out with mathematical precision, the crew members never meeting, mastermind Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) hidden from view at initial interview behind a bank of blinding lights. But the investigation is clever, too, donkey work – tracking everyone who flew to Geneva (where the stolen cash is banked) – coupled with instinct, insurance agent Vicki (Faye Dunaway) choosing Crown as the most likely criminal from his photograph, and a piece of inspiration, offering a huge reward for anyone noticing their spouse had been in Boston on the day of the robbery and been behaving oddly.

Crown is a fabulous invention, savvy businessman, bursting with competitive instinct, unable to prevent himself crowing, his opening line – “you overpaid” – puncturing the triumph of businessmen who believed they bettered him in a deal. But he’s bored, riches and all the toys that brings including sexy girlfriend Gwen (Astrid Heeren) not enough, and he seeks to test himself against the law.

But he’s always testing himself, regardless of how high or how low the stakes. He’s the kind of guy who just bets for the thrill. The only reversal in the whole movie is a golf match where he employs the old sucker punch, double-or-quits routine, to be able to repeat an unexpectedly successful shot. When he loses spouts another brilliant line, “What else can we do on Sunday?”

But he’s up against as steely a competitor. Has any character ever delivered such an immortal line with such panache – “I’m immoral” – as Vicki who has no qualms about invading Crown’s house on a flimsy pretext or kidnapping the son of one of the gang. “You won that round,” she tells Crown after bringing gang member Erwin (Jack Weston) in for questioning and stationing him in the same room as Crown, hoping to elicit recognition.

You’d hardly be surprised to discover she’s more than capable of using her body as a weapon, but you’d be hard put to work out who is seducing who. For both, part of the attraction must be danger, being up close (and very personal) with your rival. It wouldn’t take much to imagine this is a reversal, that Vicki is being hunted, that in the throes of romance she will give away too much. Or that the arrogant Crown believes he can have his cake and eat it. He doesn’t need the money, he can give it back, avoid arrest and sail off into the sunset with a woman his match in style and intellect.

If there’s one flaw in the spellbinding narrative, it’s here. We all know insurance exists outside the law. Retrieving money for clients is the sole aim, justice not on the agenda. No bank chief executive wants to suffer the embarrassment of being hauled into a courtroom to explain just how fallible their security systems are. Hand back the money, bury the publicity and all’s well. I’m not entirely sure why Vicki had to seek the approval of detective Eddy (Paul Burke), leading the police side of the investigation, when she could as easily have bypassed him and picked up her ten per cent of the money as reward and sailed off into the sunset.

Unless, of course, it’s not a flaw. And that for Vicki, as resolute a competitor as Crown, she requires official recognition of victory and to prove her superiority over the criminal by allowing him to be set free, giving her if you like the upper hand in the relationship.

Director Norman Jewison was on a box office roll after turning conspiracy upside down with The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966), and exploring racism with In the Heat of the Night (1967). Where most critics prefer directors who reveal thematic consistency, Jewison seemed to be headed every which way – although in the cat-and-mouse stakes you could look at The Cincinnati Kid (1965) – with elan his ace in the hole.

And if you ever sat in a movie theater and thought you could do better than the drivel you were watching, then screenwriter Alan R. Trustman would be your patron saint. A lawyer by profession, he wrote The Thomas Crown Affair in a couple of weeks and, hardly surprising, given its audacity, it found its way to an agent. He went on to write Bullitt (1969), Lady Ice (1973) – almost a remake of Thomas Crown – and The Next Man (1974) for Sean Connery.

The best fun crime movie since Hitchcock paired Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief (1955) and never bettered since.

Dazzling.

Rebus / Appointment in Beirut (1968) ***

Ann-Margret, at this point in her career, must have had a clause written in her contract that she gotta sing, gotta dance. And you can see the sense of that demand because, as in previous films, she proves she can shake her booty, that number more of a showstopper than her earlier crooning. But, honestly, she has taken a backward step in terms of billing. Here, she’s effectively the leading lady rather than the top-billed star, and really, beyond the dancing, little more than “the girl.”

The heist itself is niftily done, making use not just of such an old-fashioned notion as a magnet but also making a pitch for early recognition as one of the originators of solar power. (How that combination works out, I’ll leave to your imagination.) But, in a twist in the heist genre, the focus is largely on those trying to stop a major robbery from a casino in Beirut, the latest in a series of thefts from top casinos around the world. And it’s not a heist in the normal sense. Millions of dollars have gone missing, but no one can figure out how.

Naturally, your automatic port of call would be an alcoholic croupier, Jeff (Laurence Harvey), currently working at The Playboy Club in London because it’s about the only city where he’s not been blacklisted. Anyway, handed a ticket to Beirut and the prospect of some easy cash by Benson (Jose Calvo) who initially appears as a drunken apparition in the fog, Jeff decides it’s the easiest option.

Benson, it transpires, is not the shady character Jeff imagined, but some kind of investigator entrusted with finding out who is defrauding the casinos. Jeff makes the acquaintance of night club singer Laura (Ann-Margret), who soon develops a soft spot for him, but not enough to join him for a drink (or, presumably, sex) after work since that time is set aside for current squeeze Ghinis (Ivan Desny).

No sooner has Jeff worked out that a huge amount of cash is at stake than he carves himself a slice of it, $100,000, working for Benson. But, no sooner has he won that particular lottery than the bad guys make a counter-offer, the same amount but at least you’ll come out of the deal alive. Laura is clearly some kind of bait to keep him sweet, though she could be bait for hundreds of customers as she shakes her booty during her big number, “Take a Chance,” the lyrics, ironically enough, encouraging gambling.

This being the kind of European co-production that requires assistance from the authorities, we are treated to a tour of the sights of Beirut (there’s also a journey by motorbike earlier on from Highgate in London to Mayfair and by taking rather a detour manages to take in many of the capital’s finest tourist sites). The Beirut leg of the movie itinerary takes in a traditional concert in some first-class ruins, a bazaar, and for reasons that may be more to do with commercial concerns than tourist, an oil refinery.

There’s also a very irritating shrill American, Mrs Brown (Camilla Horn), who, constantly getting in Jeff’s way, appears to be there just for comic effect, intent as if she had a social media channel to film everything in view. Turns out her movie camera and the lady herself are there for another purpose entirely.

The heist, itself, is particularly well done, especially as it appears to be achieved by a bunch of proper strangers – that is people who seem to have no connection to each other at all rather than the old trope of strangers coming together for a robbery by the end of which they know far too much about each other.

Unfortunately, from the narrative perspective and for fans of Ann-Margret (The Swinger, 1966), she is less the femme fatale than the equivalent of the dumb blonde. But pretty much you could have advertised this as starring two Hollywood stars who had fallen from grace and were taking Italian coin because little else was on offer. Laurence Harvey (Life at the Top, 1965) is actually pretty good, when sober capable of dealing with good guys and bad guys and with still enough charm to make romance with Ann-Margret seem plausible. Except that this is not a great movie, though interesting enough in a double-cross kind of way and the heist is good, both actually acquit themselves well, Ann-Margret correct in her assumption that her dancing goes a long way to keep audiences sweet.

This was only the second film for director Nino Zanchin, and the fact that he only got to make one more tells its own story.

You may have been scratching your head, wondering when the hell “Rebus” is going to appear or perhaps imagine it’s some kind of code word or password. No amount of head-scratching by myself right to the end of the movie made any sense out of this title. That was the original title, but some distributors, fed up presumably with scratching their heads, opted for the more sensible Appointment in Beirut.

An okay watch, some decent twists and lifted I guess you would have to say by Ann-Margret’s dance number more than Laurence Harvey’s snippy performance

Criminal Affair/Seven Men and one Brain / 7 Uomini et un Cervello (1968) ***

After Murderers Row (1967), Ann-Margret flipped Hollywood the finger. At one point in the early 1960s contracts had been oozing from every pore, multiple deals with multiple studios, even one to star opposite Frank Sinatra. And despite showing considerable acting talent as a mother rather than moll in Once A Thief (1965), the career she had envisaged had not materialized.

In part, her reign as a glamor queen had been usurped by Raquel Welch, who had out-bikinied her in One Million Years B.C. (1966) and Fathom (1967), or by the slimmer versions of beauty emanating from Britain in the shape of Julie Christie or from French exile in the shape of Jane Fonda.. But mostly, you would say, her box office hadn’t matched her salary and she was learning fast that promise can only take you so far. So, she took a leaf out of La Welch’s book, and headed for Italy, for a three-year four-picture sojourn.

She was probably the biggest Hollywood star to head there during the whole decade, not the never-was-es and has-beens who usually made the Transatlantic crossing. But if she had thought she would get the pick of the roles, juicy parts directed by top arthouse names, she was sadly mistaken. It was clear Hollywood-on-the-Tiber viewed it the other way round, and saw her as adding some box office pizzazz to, by Hollywood standards, less well-made productions. This was her final effort.

I never thought I’d be saying this but in Criminal Affair Ann-Margret gets in the way of a neat heist thriller that occasionally slips into the broad Italian comedy unbeloved by everyone outside Italy. But this one does have a clever premise and like many of the best robbery movies the set-up is intriguing.

Criminologist professor Simpson (Rossanno Brazzi), classes filled with more adoring female students than Indiana Jones, has more than an academical interest in his subject, having planned and executed one jewel theft, and in traditional gangster fashion pulled a fast one on his confederates. As luck would have it, his bosses grant him an all-expenses paid sabbatical to Buenos Aires where he plans to pull off the crime of the century.

FYI, that ain’t Ann-Margret on the bed and, despite the opportunity to get her soaking wet as was always a prerequisite regarding women when water was introduced, she doesn’t appear in the sewer scene either.

Accompanying him is mooning secretary Leticia (Ann-Margret) who prefers sporting herself in sexy ensembles or nothing at all to attract his attention rather than undertaking the more mundane tasks her job title might suggest. All to no avail, so it would seem, although she does, without her knowledge, play a vital role in his plan, as do some parakeets.

Academic profile opening doors, Simpson is able to scour police files to find his team, with one particular set of skills, that they can sing and properly for the grand plan is to stage a robbery at the opening night of La Traviata in the city, attended by the high and mighty who have paid colossal sums for the privilege.

He enrols other accomplices such as Georgette (Helene Chanel) whose task is divert the owner of the box overlooking the stage for which Simpson has another use. Her presence and that of the diva (Barbara Nichols) enrages Leticia, who resorts to swimming naked in the pool, flirting with the muscular butler and when that fails bombarding Simpson with dinner plates.

The use of the sewer is something of a heist trope, although there’s an original method of covering up the drilling and explosion, but mostly through misdirection we don’t quite work out how Simpson is going to fleece the opera house. Improbable a ruse as it is, nonetheless, as befits his high opinion of himself, the concept is a work of genius. Complications arise when the jewel robbers pursue him to Argentina. The film pretty much dispenses with the other heist trope, of spending much time on the character development of his new thieving team, beyond some obvious comedy.

The fact that Leticia has little to do deprives the picture of any reason for her presence, except as a dupe, physical attributes a distraction when necessary, and her lack of awareness that she is playing a key role leads to the movie’s sting in the tail.

But, in terms of the way the heist plays out, any actress could have played the part. It didn’t need to be Ann-Margret. And there’s not even any excuse, in a movie where singing is central, for her to sing. It’s possibly the most redundant role she ever took on. A bit more screenplay could have fixed that, had her character been developed along the lines of that of La Welch in her Italian-made heist picture The Biggest Bundle of Them All which appeared the same year.

And it might have better just to concentrate more on Rosanno Brazzi (The Battle of the Villa Florita, 1965) because he has mother issues, carries his absent-minded personality disguise well, and allocate more time to the intricacies of the plot and his pursuers. Viewed just as a heist picture without the unnecessary diversions of the female lead and the comedy it pretty much makes the grade. On the other hand Ann-Margret’s existence might simply have been that since he was also director he couldn’t carry the acting side of the picture on his own.

No doubt, though, I will have to check out, for your benefit, Ann-Margret’s other Italian trio.

You can catch this on Youtube though the print is a bit washed-out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swf2yWL6E4Q

Perfect Friday (1970) ****

Delicious caper movie. Under-rated and largely dismissed because a) it is very British, b) audiences preferred Stanley Baker in an action film like Zulu (1964) and c) it appeared a year after the action-driven heist picture The Italian Job. So many black marks you might think it was an automatic candidate for relegation.

But, in fact, it is a delight, a gem that never outstays its welcome and, furthermore, elicits tremendously enjoyable performances from the three principals, with the added bonus, I guess, of the costume budget being much reduced by Ursula Andress prancing around so much in the nude.

Mr Graham (Stanley Baker) is an uptight, bowler-hatted, spectacled, unmarried, straitlaced banking executive. That’s too fancy a title for his job. He’s not the manager, he’s not even the deputy, he’s the deputy to the deputy (here called an “under-manager”) and his sole joy in life appears to be granting or refusing overdrafts, an action that might, to one of life’s smidgeons, be construed as an exercise in power.

One of his clients is uber-sexy Lady Britt Dorset (Ursula Andress) who, while living in penury, manages to swan around in the most divine outfits and a swanky sports car, mostly as the result of his overdrafts. Although he believes he is tough and worldly it never occurs to him to wonder how his client has the wherewithal to repay the overdrafts.

She is married, but to the equally poverty-stricken Lord Nicholas Dorset (David Warner) whose sole income derives from a daily payment from sitting in the House of Lords and schemes such as attaching his name to a restaurant chain.

It doesn’t strike Mr Graham as particularly odd that Britt takes a fancy to him, infidelity appearing to be written into her marriage vows. And it’s not long before the deputy deputy manager starts to wonder how he might turn this relationship into something more permanent. So he comes up with a clever caper, a three-man job, or more correctly a two-man one-woman job. He’s going to steal £300,000, split three ways, from his bank. Nicholas will pose as a bank inspector, Britt will be the one who physically removes the cash and Mr Graham, naturally, will take on the role of criminal mastermind, finding a way to get hold of the necessary duplicate keys and over-riding the usual security concerns.

For a good while most of the plan consists of keeping the husband out of the way, sent on various “missions” across the country and abroad, to give Mr Graham time to enjoy making love to the wife. There’s an occasional hiccup to the plan, but mostly it appears to be running smoothly.

Except, as you might imagine, double cross is afoot. Mr Graham would like to purloin the husband’s share, all the more to set up cosy home somewhere abroad with the wife. And, as you might expect, there’s a sting in the tale.

But this is all so effortlessly done, tremendous tension as the robbery is carried out in complete silence (as was by now par for the course), jaunty music intervening at other times, the combination of the three opposites making for a delightful scenario, the stuffy manager at odds with the lazy, louche husband, and an unlikely companion for the sexy, apparently docile, wife.

Some clever directorial touches from Peter Hall (Three into Two Won’t Go, 1967) provide unexpected zest, but primarily this is a comedy of manners shifted onto the heist plane. And the best thing about it is the performances.

Ursula Andress (The Blue Max, 1966), here taking top billing, delivers her best-ever performance, the sexy front concealing a clever brain, easily manipulating lover and husband, deceit embedded in her genes, the hard-coiled core hidden from view, as she indulges both herself and her paramour.

Stanley Baker is superb, almost in Accident (1966) stiff upper lip mode, but without, until sex triggers criminality, that character’s free-wheeling attitude and immorality. He lives his entire life in a glass booth, observing and being observed, working within an arcane code of practices, not believing that he, of all people, could actually break the rules.

But David Warner (Titanic, 1997) steals the show as a bored upper-class lord who wants nothing more than a quiet life paid for by someone else and who almost throws a hissy fit when, as part of his role, he is forced to wear clothes he finds demeaning. If it wasn’t for the prize, this whole enterprise would be so much beneath him, and he doesn’t even have the satisfaction of being able to put this underling in his place.

Sheer enjoyment.

The Caper of the Golden Bulls / Carnival of Thieves (1967) ***

Just to be clear. Nobody is stealing a golden bull, though the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona in Spain is a plot element. No, this gang, led by former bank-robber Churchman (Stephen Boyd) is only going to break into an impregnable bank (par for the course) and steal priceless royal jewels.

There’s an audacious, certainly unorthodox, plan, tension throughout between Churchman’s sexy former lover Angela (Giovanna Ralli) and current more demure squeeze Grace (Yvette Mimieux), a couple of unexpected comedy sequences, a silent heist and a superb final twist.

*Just to be clear – there’s no bikini blonde with a pistol.*

Churchman is not your ordinary robber. He only hit banks to make reparation for, while a World War Two pilot, mistakenly dropping bombs on a French cathedral, donating the loot to the reconstruction. Angela, with no such ideals, has spent her share of the dosh and intent on a financial top-up blackmails Churchman, now a respected businessman, into the one-final-caper scenario.

Key to getting the jewels out is becoming involved in the annual fiesta, of which the bull-running is a minor part. The bull-running, too, shifts the dynamic of the job, and what appears an irrelevant sub-plot of former resistance fighters hunting a traitor provides an essential pay-off.

When moral Grace uncovers the plot she is inveigled to participate, ensuring some spicy bitchy dialog between herself and the more obviously immoral Angela. Unwittingly helping out is Spanish cop (Walter Slezak) and with Churchman committed the only person Angela needs use her wiles on is a giant, friendlier by the minute as he responds to her seductive smiles.

While this lacks the panache, guile or gloss of a Topkapi (1964) or Gambit (1966), it’s certainly well-done enough. It’s one of those films you appreciate more after you’ve watched it than during, the structure of the screenplay most of all, as all the little pieces of a finely-tuned jigsaw lock into place.

There’s a couple of excellent reversals, an ambush where firecrackers pass for bullets, imminent discovery of explosives thwarted by a quick-thinking Grace, and some split-second timing. Explosives, timed to match the firing of a cannon, allow a bystander cop to remark, “that cannon gets louder every time.” At first the fiesta appears standard time-filling tourist-fodder but both the parade and the bull-running are allocated genuine spots in the narrative.

The sensuous, devious Giovanna Ralli (Deadfall, 1968) is the pick, a femme fatale straight out of film noir, with a knowing twist in her main seduction scene. Fans of Stephen Boyd (Assignment K, 1968) will enjoy seeing him dally with conscience rather than rely on a straight down the line hardman, albeit with more than an ounce of charm. What Yvette Mimieux (Dark of the Sun, 1968) ultimately brings to the occasion is hidden until the end so her character has more depth than initially surmised.

There was a sense here, though, of three stars still trying to make their mark on Hollywood, establishing their marquee credentials. Although Boyd had enjoyed box office success in Fantastic Voyage (1966) and The Bible (1966) he was not seen as the main element in those film’s hitting the target. Other films relying on his star potential to pull in an audience had flopped.

Outside possibly of Disney confection Monkeys, Go Home! (1967) and The Time Machine (1960) Yvette Mimieux had yet to enjoy a proper hit. Giovanna Ralli was the latest in a string of European imports, a low-level gamble since they were cheaper than Hollywood alternatives even though most never made the grade or did so only fleetingly.

You wouldn’t pick this picture to put either of the trio back on the very top since for the sake of later twists the screenplay plays around with motivation and the very lack of gloss limits the movie’s potential. But although we’ve seen much of this before, it’s still suspenseful enough.

Russell Rouse (A House Is Not A Home, 1964) directs from a screenplay by David Moessinger (Number One, 1969) and Ed Waters, who had form in this area with Man-Trap (1961).

An engrossing enough matinee.

Robbery (1967) ****

The explosive gut-wrenching high octane car chase that kicked off this thriller – and provided British director Peter Yates (Bullitt, 1968) with a Hollywood calling card – is somewhat out of place in this intriguing documentary-style fictionalised account of the British heist of the century, the Great Train Robbery of 1963. Setting aside that the chase would have been better employed as the climax, it does provide the cops with enough leads to keep tabs on some of the criminals, ensuring the authorities become aware of the gigantic theft planned.

But Yates’ unusual approach takes us away from the usual crime picture. You can say goodbye to the cliched villain for a start. Mastermind Paul Clifton (Stanley Baker) dresses like a suave businessman. Wife Kate (Joanna Pettet) rails against him for betrayal, not sexual infidelity, but for pretending he had given up the life of crime. And there is any amount of nuance. We don’t discover that Clifton lives in a huge mansion with a massive drive until the very end, we don’t know who else the police are tailing until they are picked up, we are not let in on the secret of Clifton’s escape until suddenly he is taking off in a light airplane. And there is the unexpected. A suspect is identified in a line-up by a witness slapping his face, a message sent to Kate from Paul via a dog.

*Cop James Booth questions gangster’s moll Joanna Pettet.*

Nor, beyond the basics, are we let in on the details of the plan, more time spent on recruitment, and not the usual suspects either, Robinson (Frank Finlay) – broken out of prison for this specific job – brought unwillingly on board because, as a former bank employee, he can check the stolen notes. I should point out, which may not be obvious to a contemporary audience, that banks shifted money over the weekend via the London-Glasgow night train that carried the mail. Given the £3 million being transported, the train is staffed not by a regiment of security guards but by postal workers sorting letters.

There’s nothing desperately clever about the plan anyway beyond its audacity. Signals are changed to make the train stop at the allotted point, the robbery takes place in military fashion, timed to the minute, some sacks left behind when time is up.

What’s cleverest is the hideout, an abandoned airfield, with underground passages. The gang doesn’t intend to run while the heat is at its hottest but some time later, the cash divvied up, Clifton’s share sent as cargo overseas. Clifton knows the consequences will involve road blocks, house searches, cars impounded, arrests but “without the money they can’t prove anything.” A junkyard owner is paid – too handsomely as it transpires – to clean the vehicles used of fingerprints and other potential giveaways (not much else in the days before DNA). And no matter Clifton ruling with a rod of iron, there is always the idiot who doesn’t quite stick to the plan.

Most of the picture is detail, not just the meticulous planning but the equally meticulous hounding by the cops, interrogating getaway driver Jack (Clinton Greyn), identity parades, telephones tapped (or a crude version of it), with only the occasional hunch to keep the police, led by the dogged Inspector Langdon (James Booth), on the right track. A few years before cops in movies were uniformly identified as either corrupt or useless, sometimes both, this bunch are shown to be relatively efficient, though still prone to underhand means.

Dominating proceedings is the moustached figure of Stanley Baker (Sands of the Kalahari, 1965) whose brusque no-nonsense manner sets the tone. He’s a cut above the normal criminal not just in ambition but ingenuity and while he rules the roost in the gang he’s less at home at home where Kate gives him a hard time. James Booth (Fraulein Doktor, 1969) is impressive as the pursuer, well-versed in gangland lore, inclined to look beyond the obvious. With only a few scenes Joanna Pettet (The Best House in London, 1969) makes a mark.

In supporting parts you will spot Barry Foster (The Family Way, 1966), who seems to have the knack of catching the camera’s attention with a look or the turn of his head, and Frank Finlay (A Study in Terror, 1965), and a host of British character actors like George Sewell (The Vengeance of She, 1968) and Glynn Edwards (The Blood Beast Terror, 1968).

But the honors go to Peter Yates (Summer Holiday, 1963), not just for the stunning car chase which Hollywood would forever emulate, but the constant tension, the cutting back and forth between cops and robbers, and between the overtly dramatic and the subtle. He also had a hand in the screenplay along with George Markstein (The Odessa File, 1974) and in his only movie Edward Boyd (The View from Daniel Pike, 1971-1973).

Ride the High Country (1962) ****

Far from routine western with director Sam Peckinpah, in his sophomore picture, channelling territory that would later become more familiar, old friends turning enemies, the encroachment of civilization, the passing of the Old West, and sharing with The Misfits (1961) incredulity that the once noble occupation of cowboy/lawman has become redundant. In Major Dundee (1965) and The Wild Bunch (1969), the story turns on former friends turned enemies, here that aspect is in its infancy.

Down on his luck former lawman Steve Judd (Joel McCrea), shirt collar frayed, holes in his boots, eyesight not what it was, recruits old pal Gil Westrum (Randolph Scott), reduced to running a western sideshow, to help him escort a load of gold down from the mountains. Gil brings along his younger sidekick Heck Longtree (Ron Starr). Along the way, romance beckons for the ever romantically-inclined Heck when he encounters young Elsa (Mariette Hartley), daughter of Bible-thumping farmer Joshua. When she runs off, intending to marry prospector Billy Hammond (James Drury) at the mining camp, they act as her escort.

Gil turns out not to be the straight-shooter he originally appeared, planning to rob the gold consignment on the way back, with or without Steve’s assistance. The plot takes a wild detour in the mining settlement when Elsa realizes that her marriage will take place in a brothel, her fiancé is a drunk, and that his four brothers reckon they will have equal claim on her sex-wise. Gil arranges for the marriage to be apparently annulled, which doesn’t for a moment fool the Hammond brothers, and the return journey, already splintered by Steve working out what was on Gil’s mind, turns into one ambush after another.

The narrative switch away from the cowboys bewailing their lot, or, in Gil’s case planning payback for a life gone awry, to the plight of the vulnerable woman in the last of the lawless western wildernesses, is a nifty one. But you can’t help seeing Gil’s point, all the gun wounds, gunfights, months in hospitals, jobs lost as a result of confinement, make a man’s mind turn to the notion he has not been correctly reward for his endeavours. And not quite as convinced as Steve that honor makes up for everything.

There is some very lively dialog, great banter as Gil tries to sow sedition in Steve’s ear, Steve with an endless fund of humorous retorts, gently explaining that the hole in his boot is a masterpiece of the shoemaker’s art, a clever method of hidden ventilation, at each point deflecting a wily tongue probing for weakness. Steve is soon revealed as anything but a gunman past his past, or even a bare-knuckled fighter, knocking out cold a disbelieving Heck.

The romance is well done, Heck convinced he has prised Elsa away from her father, only to discover he is not included in her plans, and the isolated virgin unlikely to respond to male ardor. But when the reality of marriage strikes home, a slap in the face required to guarantee compliance, Elsa is extremely lucky not just to find Steve and Gil willing to come to her rescue, but for the less upstanding Gil to take legal matters into his own hand, although you can’t help feeling, in terms of the subsequent mortality rate, this is a hell of a price to pay for a young girl who was not aware of the realities of married life. But, hell, every decent western requires sacrifice.

Peckinpah introduces some excellent twists on more common scenes. A horse race is won by a camel, belly dancers instead of saloon girls, the restaurant bust up in the traditional fistfight is Chinese, Steve assumes the crowds lining the streets to witness the race are extending a hospitable welcome to him, courtesy of his previous exploits. And to Gil’s consternation, the fat pot of gold, literally, diminishes by the minute, the original quarter of a million dollars reduced first to twenty thousand and then a mere eleven, almost hardly worth reneging on a lifetime friendship. Unusually, the lusty young Heck begins to question turning criminal. And the clue to Joshua’s behavior is visual, as we glimpse his wife’s headstone, marked “harlot.”

But when it comes to the showdown you will see an early rehearsal of the famed shootout in The Wild Bunch. But here observation takes the place of action and the steady drip-drip of Gil’s moans serve to highlight a life wasted in community service and Steve’s stoical insistence on law and order, a code that demands good humor in the face of adversity.

This was a splendid last hurrah for Randolph Scott (Western Union, 1941) , well past his Hollywood heyday and now consigned to B-movie westerns, though lucky enough to team up with Budd Boetticher for the seven late-1950s pictures known as the Ranown Cycle, now held in very high esteem. Joel McCrea (Union Pacific, 1939), too, was on the downward Hollywood slide, pretty much restricted to westerns for the whole of the 1950s. This proved to be his final movie of this decade and he only made three more. So, for both, Ride the High Country, was a fitting send-off. Future Wild Bunch alumni Warren Oates and L.Q Jones had small parts.

Ron Starr (G.I. Blues, 1960) and Mariette Hartley (Marnie, 1964) were unlucky that their performances did not reach a wider audience, especially among producers, because they both created multi-faceted characters. Sam Peckinpah was far luckier, Ride the High Country becoming a calling card among foreign critics.

Deadfall (1968) **

“The Big Reveal” comes too late to save this heist-cum-melodrama. It can’t make up its mind whether it wants to join the canon of superlative 1960s caper pictures – in which case it needed to make a greater effort on the cat burglary front – or whether it’s an odd addition to the menage a trois category, in which case it needed characters you could actually believe. Worst of all, it contains one of the great artistic follies, a robbery carried out in time with an orchestra playing one of the great John Barry compositions, “Romance for a Guitar and Orchestra.”

The only problem, there’s no dramatic reason for this. Since the concert is miles away from the robbery, it’s not as if the music drowns out the shenanigans. Director Bryan Forbes (King Rat, 1965) shoots himself in the foot. It’s too clever a device by half, even if the music is intended as a counterpoint to the robbery’s more dramatic themes or the silence which had become a trope.

Cat burglar Henry (Michael Caine) forms a business partnership with elderly safecracker Moreau (Eric Portman) and falls for his wife Fe (Giovanna Ralli). The husband-wife relationship is off to begin with, he preferring males, and the wife admitting she doesn’t always find men attractive, though quite what she is hinting at is never made clear. The target is millionaire Salinas (David Buck), whom Henry is investigating to the point of pretending to be an alcoholic so he can get to know Salinas in a sanatorium.

Any other movie would get straight to the point – draw up plans and get on with it. But here, for no real reason except delay, Moreau wants them to do a trial run, a safecracking job on the mansion of the kind of couple who drive off in a posh car to attend a concert. The effort put into the planning isn’t really up to scratch, not when compared to the likes of Topkapi (1964) – to which every heist film of the era was measured – or Gambit (1966) or even the less well-known The Happy Thieves (1960) or Seven Thieves (1960).

Apart from some cat burglary skills the whole episode is perfunctory, guard dogs knocked out by drugs. The background music, the aforementioned John Barry opus, just about kills off any prospect of tension. It only sparks into life when Moreau admits the safe is beyond him and Henry has to prise it out of the wall and cart it to the waiting car.

The second heist would have been far more interesting had we known from the start that Salinas welcomes burglary attempts, seeing it as some kind of duel of wits with malfeasants.

In between the two robberies there is time enough – too much time in fact – for Henry and Fe to get it together, for Fe to run off and then return only to learn in The Big Reveal the kind of despicable man her husband is. The movie can’t even deal with the incestuous sub-plot and just lets it hang there. But by that stage you couldn’t care less. Fe isn’t the type of femme fatale to bother crossing the road for, the romance seems too prescribed and the downbeat ending makes no sense.

I’m only giving this any points at all really because it stars Michael Caine (Hurry Sundown, 1967) and features a lengthy slice of John Barry music. Caine has been in enough duds for sure, but this doesn’t have the ring of one of his doing-it-for-the-money numbers or a stab at the Hollywood big-budget scene. Caine is good enough and Eric Portman (The Bedford Incident, 1965) is an interesting study. But it just doesn’t gel, not just let down by Giovanna Ralli (The Caper of the Golden Bulls, 1967) but by the pretentious direction and dramatic miscalculation of Bryan Forbes.

Forbes’ wife Nanette Newman (The Wrong Box, 1966) makes a puzzling appearance in a small role with no dramatic credibility. Leonard Rossiter (Deadlier than the Male, 1967) provides another cameo. For many the high spot will be to see John Barry in the flesh, conducting the orchestra playing his composition.

Seven Thieves (1960) ****

You wouldn’t figure director Henry Hathaway for a caper movie. He seemed more at home with action, whether that be war (The Desert Fox, 1951), adventure (Legend of the Lost, 1957) or western (Nevada Smith, 1966) although he was a dab hand at film noir (Kiss of Death, 1947). And before the big-budget all-star Oceans 11 entered the equation in the same year as Seven Thieves – and stole much of its thunder – the heist movie ran mostly on B-movie steam such as Rififi (1955), The Killing (1956) and Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958).

And probably judged against other glossy efforts of the 1960s like Topkapi (1964) and Gambit (1967) Seven Thieves would appear on the surface to come up a bit short. No doubt accounting for it being so under-rated. But while this is in itself a neat little thriller the kick comes in the emotional entanglements and a succession of twists at the end that sends it in my book into a higher category.

And it’s so outrageously clever that the mystery of why French-based criminal mastermind Theo Wilkins (Edward G. Robinson) would reach out across the Atlantic Ocean to recruit former jailbird Paul Mason (Rod Steiger) to spearhead the heist of a cool four million dollars from a Monte Carlo casino is not resolved until the end, and in spectacular fashion.

Technically, there are actually only six thieves, the other is an inside man, Raymond (Alexander Scourby), who has fallen for the seductive charms of nightclub dancer Melanie (Joan Collins). Making up the rest of the septet are safe cracker Louis (Michael Dante) and muscle-cum-driver Hugo (Berry Kroeger) with Poncho (Eli Wallach) playing the key role of the pretend crippled, arrogant, irascible millionaire – and contrary to the claims of one poster he is the decoy not Melanie.

Distrust of his team makes Theo bring in Paul, who ruthlessly knocks them into shape, putting into seamless action the plan devised by Theo. Simply put, Poncho is going to act as a distraction by having a heart attack at the gambling table while Paul and Louis climb out a window along a ledge to the casino director’s flat which provides, by means of an elevator, direct access to the underground vaults. Once they’ve stolen the cash, they clamber back along the ledge and hide in the flat where, by this time, Theo, playing the role of Poncho’s personal physician, has taken him. The money will be hidden in Poncho’s wheelchair and removed to a waiting ambulance.

But Paul is a rather suspicious character and wants to know what he’s letting himself in for so in turn works out the weaknesses of his team. Melanie hides behind a façade of high birth, Pancho is too reckless, “measuring danger only in terms of profit,” Hugo prone to unnecessary violence, while Louis has omitted to mention he is terrified of heights, the ledge on which the operation depends standing on a 100ft high cliff.

*In some posters, this was promoted as Al Capone (Steiger)*
*vs Little Caesar (Robinson).*

The plan relies on Poncho actually appearing to be dead, so dead that the casino director (Sebastian Cabot) will not hesitate, at Theo’s insistence, to shift him out of sight of the rest of the gamblers into his flat. But Complication No 1 is that Poncho doesn’t want to be dead, even if it is a ruse, skeptical of Theo’s plan to convincingly knock him out by means of a carefully measured dose of cyanide. Complication No 2 is that a night club client recognizes Melanie and casts doubt on her credentials as a lady of quality. Complication No 3 is that English physician Dr Halsey (Alan Caillou) questions whether Poncho is as dead as he seems.

But such complications are nothing compared an extraordinary range of twists that raise tension sky-high at the movie’s denouement. I challenge you to guess what these three superbly-conceived twists would be, all of them one by one turning the project on its head, and it rapidly shifts from one direction to another, ending with an unbelievable – and yet so in keeping with the premise – climax.

Attention to character detail lifts this out of the rut, whether it be Theo’s penchant for collecting seashells, Paul resplendent in a white suit, Melanie resisting the blandishments of becoming a kept woman, Raymond trying to climb out the murky depths into which the lure of Melanie has taken him, and a series of subtle relationships, some developing through the robbery, others which began long before the heist working themselves out.

The heist itself is well done, tension kept constant mostly through the failings of the crew and the suspicions of the dupes. All in all an excellent picture.

This was a critical film in the careers of most of the cast. Edward G. Robinson (The Cincinnati Kid, 1965) was handed his first top-billed role in four years. It was a deliberate change of pace for Rod Steiger (The Pawnbroker, 1964). For Eli Wallach, best known at the time for stage work, it was the first of three films that year that would launch him into the higher ranks of top supporting stars; it was followed by The Magnificent Seven and The Misfits. After being leading lady to the likes of Gregory Peck and Richard Burton, this spelled the end of Twentieth Century Fox’s belief in Joan Collins’ star qualities while for Michael Dante (The Naked Kiss, 1964) it was a step up.

Wallach and Dante could be accused of over-acting but Robinson, Steiger and Collins all act against type with considerable effect. Hathaway does a superb job working from a script by Sydney Boehm (Rough Night in Jericho, 1967) based on the Max Catto bestseller.