Review of How to Steal a Million (1966) by Lindsay G — 04 Mar 2009

If, like me, you find the Ocean's Eleven films talky and convoluted, you'll probably enjoy How To Steal A Million. It's a relief to finally see a heist film where you a) understand what's going on and b) care about the people doing it. It's also nice to see a film take its time developing the story and the characters, rather than condensing all the important stuff into a bunch of super-slick montages.

In How To Steal A Million, Nicole Bonnet (Audrey Hepburn) lives with her wealthy father, who happens to make a living faking artistic masterpieces and selling them. He's eluded suspicion until now, when he sends the prized - and very fake - Cellini statue to be exhibited in a gallery. When they realise it will be tested and exposed as a fake, the Bonnets panic. Luckily, they were recently almost robbed by a charismatic burglar (Peter O'Toole), and Nicole employs him to steal back their own statue.

The heist itself is a thing of clever simplicity. Granted, it rests on some rather grand suspension of disbelief - for some reason, the guards in the museum can be counted on not to actually guard anything - but it's still fun, funny and smart. It's also the point in the film where Nicole and Simon (O'Toole) get closer to each other, emphasised nicely by having to squeeze into a cupboard when hiding from the guards.

It's one of those great casts where are all the characters, even the smaller ones, are quirky and interesting. (I particularly liked the head guard at the museum, played by Jacques Marin, who is driven slowly mad by the heist.) The script is constantly witty, but not in that awful I'm-a-writer-and-this-is-my-witty-script way that modern scripts tend towards. Hepburn and O'Toole have a charming rapport that makes spending twenty minutes watching them sit in a cupboard strangely compelling. The only niggles are the length and the direction. This is a long film, and it is fortunately never boring and often exciting and funny - however, the viewer's patience ends with the robbery, and the final fifteen minutes feel like borrowed time. And famed director William Wyler doesn't do a particularly magnificent job of actually shooting the film, often cutting crudely between different shots and takes. The length of an overlong film, of course, is also an issue you can take up with the director.

Honestly, though, these are quibbles. This is a bright, funny and inventive comedy, not really deserving of such a limited tag as "heist movie". If you're going to think of it as such, however, it's surely a great example.