How to Steal a Million

How to Steal a Million (William Wyler, 1966) Writer Harry Kurnitz (who the story for Hatari!, the novel for A Shot in the Dark, and the screenwriter for Witness for the Prosecution and a couple entries of the "Thin Man" series) could be counted on to deliver a solid story that never really amounted to what it promised...that is, other than to entertain and entertain mightily. Especially if all the elements were in place—good photography, cracker-jack actors, an ornate location or two. He didn't write important pictures. He wrote fluff. Good fluff. That would satisfy audiences, and make critics suspicious that they were being conned.

The story goes that director William Wyler, after directing Audrey Hepburn to an Oscar for Roman Holiday, wanted to re-team her with co-star Gregory Peck for another rompish movie, this time set in Paris. In the forseeable future, however, Hepburn and Wyler worked on The Children's Hour together, Wyler had directed a little film called Ben-Hur, and Peck had won his Oscar for To Kill a Mockingbird. Somehow, the elements wouldn't gel until Wyler put together Hepburn and Peter O'Toole—who was toiling in an endless stream of drama parts, and was probably attracted to the idea of something lighter for a change.

What the fuss is all about...

The story concerns one Charles Bonnet (Hugh Griffith), whose French estate contains some of the world's most renowned art treasures, and who, also, maybe coincidentally, is also one of the world's most unknown art forgers. His daughter Nicole (Hepburn, all Givenchy'd up and no place to go—O'Toole's character makes a crack about it later in the movie) is constantly worried that Dad is going to go too far some day and the Paris gendarmes will come knocking at their door and the family's wealth and reputation will be as worthless as one of Daddy's forgeries.

Wyler, exploiting the film's wide-screen presentation,

must really love that staircase.

So, imagine her dismay when guards, police and armored cars come to the drive-way. Charles assures her that he is merely lending one of his collection, "The Cellini Venus", to the Kléber-Lafayette Museum* for display and the heavy armory is for safe passage. Except for one tiny detail—that "Cellini Venus" is a forgery, too, sculpted by Charles' father and the model for it being his mother. What's more, it is probably more susceptible to being realized as a forgery than one of the family's many paintings. Her father is not worried, and the small Venus is whisked away for display. Nicole is not so reassured.

It doesn't help that while father Charles attends a celebratory soiree at the museum, Nicole** must confront a burglar, one Simon Dermott (O'Toole), caught in the act of examining one of the Bonnet Van Gogh's. In a tuxedo, he's exceptionally well-dressed for burgling, a move no doubt inspired by Charles' absence for the night. But, he's charming enough to be able to disarm the situation, although she does manage to ruin the line of sight by accidentally shooting him in the arm. "Oh, it's just a flesh wound" Nicole scolds. "But it's MY flesh!" he retorts.

Nicole should be worried. Dermott is something of a fraud himself. Plus, the Bonnet household is being circled by art dealer DeSolnay (Charles Boyer), who has decided to look into the Bonnet provenance and have it investigated. And a rather eccentrically driven American wheeler-dealer (Eli Wallach) wants to obtain the "Venus" by any means necessary—including marrying Nicole. 

And then, there's the major complication: insurance. Charles Bonnet is not worried about the Venus being determined a forgery, as he is merely loaning it out and it need not be examined for authenticity. He thought. But, as the museum has to insure the statue from theft, it must go through the formality of a "technical examination, which will expose the fakery. Bonnet has already signed the papers, inadvertently giving the Museum permission to its study, so surely that will expose the family.

Nicole then decides—mad-cap that she is—to hire Demott (the only burglar she knows) to steal the statue before it can be found out. It takes about an hour of cute dialogue, spry encounters, several costume changes and that nearly lethal incident of "meet-cute" before we get there. The rest of the movie documents the long, drawn-out robbery which relies on false alarms—and we see all of them.

There is magnetism involved among the principal actors—Hepburn pirouettes in her own spotlight, and O'Toole observes, amused. Wyler, on the other hand, is content to make sure we see how expansive the sets are, like he was still filming Ben-Hur. Those sets, however, never seem more than nattily-dressed cavernous sound-stages (his next film would be the equally ornate Funny Girl). How to Steal a Million is a trifle, with all the consistency of just-applied meringue, and with as much confectioner's sugar.

One interesting thing to ponder is what might have been. For the role Wallach eventually played, Walter Mathau (who was in Hepburn's Charade and starred on Broadway in Kurnitz's "A Shot in the Dark" was approached but wanted too much money. Cast instead was George C. Scott, who, unfortunately, turned up late for his first day of shooting...like, after lunch. Wyler, who was already worried that O'Toole and Griffith, two notorious drinkers, were in danger of derailing the project, would not abide such behavior in a third, and promptly fired Scott, which, apparently, greatly upset Hepburn.

 

One can only imagine...

Face it. Whatever the plot, this is what audiences wanted to see.

 

* It's fictional, but then so is The Cellini Venus...

** Interestingly, she is again caught in her bed reading a book involving Alfred Hitchcock (as was also the case in Roman Holiday). I don't know if this was a nod to his fellow director by Wyler, or if Hepburn was attempting to court Hitch to appear in one of his films (although the film Charade is considered the next best thing), but the two never collaborated. Maybe because Hepburn would not have let Hitchcock decide what she wore.

The Ghost Writer (2010)

"Brilliant...in a Horrible Kind of Way"

From the first jolting burst of rain on the soundtrack to the last exquisitely planned-out shot (and indeed to the thudding end of Alexandre Desplat's Herrmannesque score), Roman Polanski's film of The Ghost Writer is one of the most intricately mapped out paranoid-thrillers since the heady post-Watergate days when they were in vogue. But, more than those austere films of plots, counter-plots and figures in shadows, this film has wit, wisdom and a sorcerer's command of the English language. In fact, it feels more like a Hitchcock film than any of Polanski's other thrillers.

And that's due to the precision of the writing—as it should be, since the film is about writing and word-choice and the differences between truth and artifice. Co-scenarists Robert Harris (who wrote the movie source "The Ghost") and Polanski, set up an intricate puzzle to be solved, ala Hitchcock, that is both visually compelling and haunting.

For those of us who live in the Pacific Northwest, it's a familiar story: a ferry pulls into dock, and the off-load of vehicles is stopped by one lone vehicle with no one behind the wheel. Already, there's a story there with several possible outcomes. Did the driver forget he had his car and walked off the ferry? Are they still on the boat, say, in the bathroom?

Or did they fall overboard? Or, for that, were they pushed?

A simple story line—common, really—but it creates the question: where did the driver go? And for a movie it's a natural, because it can be presented in purely visual terms.

Turns out the missing man was a writer—a ghost-writer, specifically, named Mike McAra, and, within days, he's found washed-up on shore with an extremely high blood-alcohol content. McAra, at the time, had been working anonymously on the memoirs of the once popular former Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan, never better *) A new ghost-writer is hired (Ewan McGregor), and is given access to the top-secret manuscript (and the former PM) only by traveling to the high-security compound owned by the publishers to which Lang and his small staff have retreated to work on the book. The new ghost (he is never named, as he wouldn't be on the book) is de-briefed, patted down, scanned, searched and only then is he allowed to read the draft, which is under lock and key and never to leave its present sequestered location.

To his horror, he finds the book a snoozer—he doesn't like political memoirs, anyway—and he's determined to beat it into some kind of readable shape, given a time-limit of only four weeks.

The compound he's staying at on Martha's Vineyard is a concrete nightmare that looks more suited to one of the villains Brosnan battled in the Bond series—high-tech-gadgeted, and constantly surveilled. The minimal staff includes Lang's assistant from the No. 10 days, Amelia Bly (a smart, sharp Kim Cattrall), and overseen by Lang's wife Ruth (the wonderful Olivia Williams from Rushmore and An Education). Soon, complications set in and the building goes into crisis mode as it is revealed that Lang, in his dealings with the U.S. on the war on terror, was involved in the kidnapping and torture of terror-suspects, and may be brought up on charges as a war criminal by the International Criminal Court.

Suddenly, the compound is in a state of siege and that memoir becomes a hot topic: The publisher (Jim Belushi, unrecognizable and nicely brusk) wants the book in two weeks before the headlines get cold, Lang leaves to go on an image-building trip to Washington, the press is bombarding the compound ("the pack is on the move" as Amelia puts it), protesters chant outside the gate, and The Ghost is left there with a few mysteries to unravel. Both he and Lang are nicely metaphored by the compound's gardener trying to keep the dead grass he's just raked into a wheelbarrow on a blustery day.

Leave the exposition at that. But it calls to mind past Polanski films of protagonists walking in the foot-prints of people who have come before, and in danger of losing their own identity to them—not that hard for The Ghost, as he has no identity in the film (Lang merely calls him "man," because he has no head for names).

There are twists and turns, but where it is enticing is the way Polanski mines the material for suspense and humor. No detail goes unused—not the security, not the weather, not the language, not the technology, not the sound. Small glances through slitted curtains may be significant, as are muffled conversations in the next room, or the insistence by a staff-member to use a car on the island, rather than the bicycle. It COULD be innocent. He really MIGHT be concerned about the weather. But, then again...

Then, again. Along with the paranoia are moments of perverse comedy where The Ghost's stealth make him stick out like a sore thumb, or just makes things more difficult for himself. Aware of his position as a replacement, he soon finds himself retracing his predecessor's steps, having to both live up to the trusted writer's reputation, but also to do right by him to find out what happened. If he can escape the same fate.

The performer's are uniformly excellent: McGregor is a perfect protagonist, veering between deer-in-the-headlights and the wily hubris of the Man Who Knows Too Much, Brosnan and his character share a theater background, and the actor allows the arrogance and The Act of being a politician look believable in equal measure. Olivia Williams is by turns steel and rubber in her role, and Cattrall is efficiently perfect—you suspect her immediately. There are also nice turns by Timothy Hutton, Eli Wallach and the ubiquitous Tom Wilkinson, and by Robert Pugh as one of Lang's political rivals.

But it's Polanski's show—he's the Puppet-Master, the audience-conductor like Sir Alfred, and effective enough that you leave the theater with a heightened sense of awareness, looking around corners, at things out-of-place, that the world is a more dangerous place.

And the most deliciously perverse irony is that Polanski had to complete the film in the place that informed the sensibility and interests of the young Hitchcock's film career: a prison cell.**

* Despite his hard-scrabble up-bringing Brosnan has always been better at playing effete characters. It's why his James Bond was something of a bore—Brosnan seems more suited to knocking someone out with a nerve-pinch than a karate chop.

** "I must have been about four or five years old. My father sent me to the police station with a note. The chief of police read it and locked me in a cell for five or ten minutes, saying "This is what we do to naughty boys." Hitchcock/Truffaut p. 17

Seven Thieves

Seven Thieves (Henry Hathaway, 1960) One of the posters for Seven Thieves screams out the cast of characters in this Cinemascope black and white film and manages to have its own little obfuscation in there: The Dancer! (Joan Collins) The Professor! (Edward G. Robinson) The Baron! (Eli Wallach) The Gambler! (Rod Steiger) The Beatnik! (Eli Wallach) The Muscle Boy! (Berry Kroeger) The Safe Cracker! (Michael Dante). Well, kinda, the characters are a bit more nuanced than that, and "The Beatnik" is a stretch for a jazz saxophone player, but, it was the parlance of the time...and Wallach, in the film, fills the bill of two of those mentioned. Hey! It's a Heist film, and one should expect some fudging of the truth here and there, even in...and maybe especially in...the advertising.

 

Seven Thieves may be long forgotten—I'd never heard of it until Todd Liebenow of "The Forgotten Film-cast" podcast gave me a choice of four films to consider discussing in an up-coming episode.* Seven Thieves was a tempting subject—directed by Henry Hathaway—with a cast that included Wallach, Edward G. Robinson, Rod Steiger, Alexander Scourby, Sebastian Cabot, and Joan Collins. The cast alone makes it worth seeing, even if it only amounts to another variation on the One Last Big Score Caper Movie.

Professor Theo Wilkins (Robinson) is a discredited ex-patriate living in Monte Carlo. He spends his time at the beach explaining to little children how to collect shells, but, in the back of his mind is a plan. All he needs is one last "element" to bring it all together and keep it all together in order to pull it off. That "element" shows up one day in the form of gambler and thief Paul Mason (Steiger), who has affection for the old man, but is reluctant to get involved in another of the old man's quixotic ventures.

The plan, Wilkins explains, is to steal ₣4,000,000 from the vault of the casino at Monte Carlo, which will require some special equipment and specialized personnel, all of which he has, but he needs Mason, his trusted mentor, to join the group in order to keep his motley crew of conspirators in line.

The key to the whole enterprise is the casino employee (Scourby) who is so besotted with "exotic dancer" Melanie (Collins) that he will do anything for her, even rob his employer. But, he merely provides information (and invitations) to make the job go smoother...and faster. Time, you see, is the critical element here, with an elaborate distraction on the night of a special celebration at the casino. Security is tight, but it just might be too tight to take advantage of. 

47 minutes in (after much bickering and negotiating), the caper starts, involving a trick wheel-chair, a cyanide pill, a conveniently open window, some safe-cracking tools, some steady nerves and balance, and the casino manager's reluctance to have "a scene" disrupt the joint's big night. It just about comes off without a hitch...but, after all, there needs to be some element of suspense to make the movie enjoyable. 

Now, this was made in 1960, so movie-morals hadn't loosened up so much that producers might let the thieves actually get away with their ill-gotten gains. But, here, they do...but manage to have it both ways so that Boston Blue Noses and the Catholic Legion of Decency won't condemn the film for celebrating "the wages of sin." It's a rather thin ledge the film has to negotiate to do it...and far-thinner than the one that had to accommodate Rod Steiger. But, it still manages to be a semi-enjoyable film, with quite a few things to admire.

 

* The movie we decided on was The Blue Max and the episode discussing it is here.

Lord Jim (1965)

Lord Jim (Richard Brooks, 1965) Orson Welles wanted to make this Joseph Conrad story about a disgraced seaman out to prove his worth to himself and the world, and he wanted to do it with Charlton Heston—they'd talked about it while making Touch of Evil together and Welles was particularly taken with Heston's vouching for him during the turbulent making of that picture. That sort of loyalty is unusual in Hollywood and Welles must have thought Heston a good match...and good box-office. 

Conrad's novel had been adapted once before—by Victor Fleming in 1925—and Brooks optioned it in 1957. His clout with such classics as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Elmer Gantry, and Sweet Bird of Youth allowed him to make this one, which required extensive location shooting. Acquiring Peter O'Toole, hot after Lawrence of Arabia and Becket, allowed Brooks to acquire a $9 million budget, which ballooned the scope, and Lord Jim was designed as a "roadshow attraction," complete with Overture, Intermission, and Exit Music.

The story is narrated by Marlow (Jack Hawkins)—the same Marlow of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"—as he relates the tale of young James Burke (Peter O'Toole) merchant seaman, young, enthusiastic, obedient, resourceful, who becomes Marlow's first officer before becoming injured and left to be treated in Java. 

His next assignment is less fortuitous: he's hired as first mate on board the rickety S.S. Patna, transporting—as the novel puts it—800 "pilgrims of an exacting belief," Muslims, to Mecca, when the ship hits a storm and has a collision on the Red Sea. Checking for damage, Jim sees that they're taking on water, and, telling the captain that they should get the passengers to the lifeboats, is surprised when the captain and other crewmen are more intent on saving themselves. The film makes it debatable whether Jim jumps in with them, or is washed onto the lifeboat is a squall, but the result is Jim is on the lifeboat, the Patna and its passengers, abandoned to their fate.

Making port, they find that the Patna, having survived the journey with the help of a French ship, has arrived before them. The Captain and the other crew disappear to escape the infamy for their actions, which, by now, has gotten around throughout the port, but Jim insists on a trial to atone for his abandoning ship, and he is roundly condemned, stripped of his sailing papers, the chief judge telling him that, instead of an inquiry, he should have just buried "himself 20 feet deep."

Jim does the next best thing, becoming a drifter from port to port, losing himself and running away from his shame in anonymity. An incident where he saves a skiff loaded with beer and gunpowder from exploding in the harbor attracts the attention of a Mr. Stein (Paul Lukas), who just happened to be receiving that gun-powder. It's destined to be shipped to Patusan where the people, led by Stein's friend Du-Ramin (Tatsuo Saitō) are trying to defend themselves from a warlord, "The General" (Eli Wallach), and Stein hires Jim to accompany the shipment to make sure it reaches its destination, there having been some sabotage in the past.

There are attempts made on the journey, as the weaselly Cornelius (Curt Jurgens)—who used to work for Stein as his representative before he was caught skimming supplies—now is aiding "The General" in his attempts to overthrow the natives. Jim hides the cargo, but is captured, and although tortured for the information, does not reveal where it's hidden.

Jim is rescued by "The Girl" (Daliah Lavi)—in the book, her name is Jewell, but the movie doesn't even give her character a name!—and Jim leads the Patusans to the supplies and launch an attack on The General, killing everyone but Cornelius. Jim is welcomed by his fellow combatants and given the title "tuan" by the Chief, which means "Lord."

Intermission.

If you want a happy ending that would be where you ended it. If you wanted a happy audience you might have ended it there, as well. Reportedly (and this may be apocryphal) it was at this point at the London premier that James Mason's parents were so bored by the picture, they left, completely missing their son's performance in Part II. Maybe a bit impatient, but one does get the impression that Lord Jim will never end, so elongated and detailed is the film, with sequences running a trifle indulgently, and every line of dialogue treated as if it were precious. This becomes readily apparent after the Intermission.

Jim stays in Patusan, beloved by the people and The Girl. Unbeknownst to him, Cornelius and Schomberg have brought in the cut-throat pirate "Gentleman" Duncan Brown (James Mason)—"he's given more business to Death than the Bubonic Plague"—to raid the village of its treasures, and although their attempts fail, Jim negotiates with the blackguards that they may leave if they never return again. The villagers and Du-Ramin argue for attacking the pirates, but Jim wants no conflict and vows to the chief that if anyone dies because of his mercy, that he will sacrifice his own life in forfeit.

So, Jim trusts the pirates to just go away, huh? He also sets up contingency plans that, should the pirates attack, the natives can fight them back. Meanwhile, Jim looks moony and talks about the position he is in, given his second chance: "I've been a so-called coward and a so-called hero and there's not the thickness of a sheet of paper between them. Maybe cowards and heroes are just ordinary men who, for a split second, do something out of the ordinary. That's all." But, there is a great deal of difference between a romantic idealist and a conscienceless pragmatist, and Jim frustratingly never finds a middle ground. If you wanted a happy ending, you should have taken a cue from James Mason's parents and left at intermission.

It is a long tedious slog to come to that conclusion and although some of the dialog in the second part crackles with cynical brio and Mason's performance is worth watching, one has to spend so much time with O'Toole's doubting Jim—trying ever-so-hard to bring some internal depth to this character that you get stymied by the dependence on the fragile blue eyes shining out of the screen without any of the nuance or creativity the actor brought to his previous performances—that, ultimately, you lose faith in Jim, O'Toole, and the movie.

Brooks is no help here. His staging is perfunctory, whether in Cambodia or Shepperton Studios in Surrey and the one interesting shot is in the beginning with a weirdly evocative shot of a "lost soul"—which Jim could have become—walking like a zombie along a Malaysian pier. One wishes that same sort of frisson could have shown up a bit more...or ever...but it's just a tantalizing moment in a film so confident in its ambitions that it never tries to achieve them.

The Magnificent Seven (1960)

So, I was talking to a co-worker about movies. Our tastes are different. "What'd you watch last night?" I asked. 
"Oh! Great movie! The Magnificent Seven!" 
"You've never seen The Magnificent Seven?"
 "No-oo." 
"Well, finally, we can agree on something...The Magnificent Seven is a classic!" 
"Yeah. And I lo-ove Chris Pratt!"

(Long Silence)

"What?" I spluttered. "Wha...Chris Pratt?" 
"Yeah, he's so great..." 
"You mean you're talking about that Denzel Washington mess?" 
"Yeah, he's great, too."
"No, no, no, no, no!" (I explained). "You HAVE to see the Yul Brynner version!" 
"Who?" 
"Yu...okay, Steve McQueen's in it!" 
"Who?" 

At this point, I started pulling what's left of my hair out—not to try and explain Yul Brynner, of course (Good thing I didn't lead with Horst Bucholz or Brad Dexter) and explained in the most condescending way possible that if she didn't see Charles Bronson in it, it just isn't The Magnificent Seven. 

I wonder if she ever did.

The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960) Sturges' remake of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai as a Western (more accurately South-western) with cowboys (more accurately gun-slingers) is a rousing crowd-pleaser (while still maintaining the original's final resigned tone). This is not only due to Kurosawa's indestructible original tale of warriors from a by-gone age quixotically trying to save the residents of an agrarian town from bandits, but also for the charismatic cluster of stars vying for screen-time with "The King" himself, Yul Brynner.* Steve McQueen, coming off the "Wanted: Dead or Alive" series was particularly shameless about trying to grab the spotlight from Brynner. 

"It doesn't bother me," the older actor would tell Sturges. "All I have to do to upstage them is take off my hat."

In this version, it's a Mexican village being robbed by bandito's led by Eli Wallach's Calvera that cause a trio of farmers to go searching for "gun-fighters"  (they are told that gun-fighters are cheaper than guns) to take on the thieving gang. One by one, the odd troop are assembled including up-and-coming stars McQueen, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, James Coburn, Brad Dexter and Horst Bucholz,** all pistolero's down on their luck and taking on the job—for their various reasons, be it bravado, assumed reward, paternalism, loyalty—until something better comes along. It's a dangerous temporary job, so the stakes have to be personal, beyond the measly compensation for the task. They are all aware that the risk to themselves is high, but not as much as the risk to the farmers.

Each of the seven have their reasons, but each of them have their own style of combat, making the final assault on the town (after a couple of skirmishes and a temporary change of fortune) that much more dramatic as each gun-fighter has to fight their own battles in their own individual style. And it doesn't matter what style they use...they always seem to do it cool.

When one compares the Kurosawa original with Sturges' adaptation, one notices a big difference—Nature. Sturges' stage is a big blue-skied sand-blasted valley-scape that doesn't much change and makes no impact on the outcome, whereas Kurosawa staged the original's dynamic set-pieces in a violent rain-storm, increasing the odds and making them more mythic, with the Heavens themselves having a stake in the conflict. Kurosawa wasn't complaining, though. He reportedly liked the American version so much he presented John Sturges a ceremonial sword.

Momentum is kept up by some sharp writing (by blacklister Walter Bernstein and Walter Newman, both credits replaced after much bickering about changes made on set by William Roberts) but also by a rousing Copland-esque score by Elmer Bernstein*** that manages to goose the action up several notches from how it's paced on screen. This might be sacrilege to say (as the score is so iconic and tied to the movie as much as a pack of Marlboro's), but it's almost like Bernstein is trying too hard in places, as when the theme thumps along when Chris (Brynner) and Vin (McQueen) are riding a buckboard to a confrontation.

Curiously the pacing is a bit slower when the words stop and the action begins, but one hardly notices when Bernstein is controlling the tempo.

The transition (and translation) from Japan to Mexico is a bit seamless, despite the lack of atmospherics, and just as the Samurai have their distinct characteristics, so, too, do the gunfighters--only Horst Bucholz, given an outlandish billing in retrospect, fails to rise to the potential of the others. The genius of the film is Kurosawa's, but this Americanized version still has its own unique charms, enough to make The Magnificent Seven a huge success in its own right. A couple years later, the same tack was used to create a westernized version of Kurosawa's Yojimbo,**** and launched the "Spaghetti Western" and the career of its chief architect, Sergio Leone.


The Magnificent Seven was voted into the the National Film Registry in 2013.

* Brynner cut such a fine figure as a gunslinger (despite his Russian heritage—his character's ethnicity was explained away as "Cajun") that he came back for the first sequel The Return of the Seven, and was the emblematic robot shootist in Westworld and its sequel Futureworld.

** The closest I could come to finding a movie that had so many future stars (and Brad Dexter) in it is Francis Coppola's The Outsiders.

*** Bernstein's theme became known as "The Marlboro Theme" because it was used as the background music for that brand's (now extinct) cigarette commercials. The prolific Bernstein (no relation to Leonard) only won one Oscar for his music--for the musical score to Thoroughly Modern Millie.

**** That would be A Fistful of Dollars, starring Clint Eastwood.

***** The film's story would be used...again...as A Bug's Life. And, anyone remembering Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars will see more than a resemblance to The Magnificent Seven (beyond just the casting of Robert Vaughn).