William Wyler crafts a delightfully frothy caper backed up by wonderful on screen chemistry between Peter O'Toole & Audrey Hepburn. It seems to me that Hepburn always managed to bond with her Male co-stars, and here the interplay between O'Toole and herself is wonderful. Check out a long sequence of events involving the pair hiding out in a closet, it's gold dusted cinema.
The film's central plot involves Hepburn & O'Toole planning a daring robbery from a Paris museum to keep her art forger Father (a delightful Hugh Griffith) out of trouble, at first the couple are purely business partners with no love lost for each other, but as the story plays out the pair are forced to get along and etc.
The burglary itself is dramatic, attention grabbing entertainment, and it's also the film's highest point, but overall the film as a whole is simply good romantic fun. Also helps that it features a very tidy shift for the finale to further reward the audience for their time spent with the movie. Throw in dapper turns from Charles Boyer & Eli Wallach too, and it's all good really.
Open the wine, sit back and relax with Pete & Audrey. 8/10
How to Steal a Million
1966
Action / Comedy / Crime / Romance
How to Steal a Million
1966
Action / Comedy / Crime / Romance
Plot summary
In Paris, wealthy Charles Bonnet is well known in the art world as a collector of rare pieces, mostly of the impressionist masters. He will on occasion sell paintings from his collection at auction. In reality, he is an art forger, he only reproducing those pieces known to have gone missing. His daughter, Nicole Bonnet, wants him to stop this business fearing that some day soon he will get caught. She is most concerned about he loaning out his Cellini Venus statue to the Kléber-Lafayette Museum, as she knows that technology can now test for things such as material age which would prove that the statue and by association he is a fraud. He ends up causing a problem for himself when he signs a $1 million insurance policy for the statue for the museum, which unwittingly allows them to test the piece for its authenticity. To save her father from jail, Nicole feels the only thing she can do is try to steal the statue from the gallery which may not be the easiest thing to do especially as the museum has installed an electronic security system around the piece to protect it above and beyond the regular security. She contacts the only person she knows who she believes can help her, namely a burglar named Simon Dermott. Nicole and Simon had only recently met when he broke into the Bonnet mansion to steal a Van Gogh painting, Nicole catching him in the process. Nicole could not call the police to report him for fear that her father's fraudulent life would be uncovered. Nicole not only has to convince Simon to help her without actually divulging the reason why she wants to steal her own statue, but they also have to come up with a plan to steal it. Complicating matters is an American art collector named Davis Leland who is not only wooing Nicole, but wants to add many of M. Bonnet's pieces to his own collection, most specifically the Venus. Within this collective, not all is as it appears on the surface.
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You really are the smuggest and most hateful man!
This movie is just a lot of fun
While I might be one of the first people to think that this movie wasn't exactly the "deepest" film I have ever seen (as the plot really is very simple),it really doesn't matter since the film is just so much fun. In other words, you can watch it and enjoy this simple and well-made film just for the shear pleasure of watching fine acting and extremely well-crafted dialog. Of course, the acting of Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole was top-notch--this didn't come as any surprise to me. However, the supporting actors really helped this film to be an even better film. Eli Wallach was cute as a rich and eccentric American, but even better was Hugh Griffith. He played the most delightful and watchable crook I can remember seeing in quite a number of years. He actually made being an art forger "cute" he was that funny! My wife and daughter, I noticed, laughed whenever he appeared in the film and my daughter said she loved Griffith's "insane eyes".
Apparently, the old rogue (Griffith) was so brazen with his forging that he loaned a local museum a forged statue to be the centerpiece of a major exhibition! And, when insurance appraisers announce that they want to take the statue off display to appraise it for insurance purposes--and Audrey is afraid they'll discover her father's fraud. So, she uses her ample charms to convince O'Toole to help her steal with fake. That's really all there is to the basic plot, but HOW the plot unfolds is simply marvelous!
Science Encroaches On the Forgery Business
In her third and final film with William Wyler, Audrey Hepburn did a most stylish caper comedy in How To Steal A Million. Despite the title being a complete misnomer because it's not about currency, francs, pounds, or dollars, the film is a delightful romp from start to finish.
Things are about to come crashing down around the family business of art forgery that Hugh Griffith and daughter Audrey have been carrying on. A statue of Venus that Cellini supposedly did, but is a forgery that Griffith's father did some years ago is about to undergo some routine tests that were not available years ago. They will certainly disclose that the statue is a fake and while Griffith's business is forging paintings instead of sculpture the authorities might start looking him over as well.
In fact when Hepburn catches gentleman cat burglar Peter O'Toole trying to steal a Van Gogh, she actually lets him go lest the Van Gogh be investigated. Later on she looks him up when she hits upon a plan to steal the 'Cellini' statue from the museum and might have need of O'Toole's skills in such matters.
The caper part of How To Steal A Million is the most fun and I won't say a word about it except that O'Toole hits on a really good idea involving the use of a toy boomerang. The whole caper nearly boomerangs as well as Hepburn and O'Toole have to spend some considerable time in a museum broom closet where they get better acquainted.
That part of the film also calls for Hepburn to get rid of the Givenchy gowns she was known for and wear the simple dress of a museum cleaning lady. Audrey still looks good in that.
Hepburn and O'Toole have some really nice chemistry, a pity they didn't do more films together. Hugh Griffith is a favorite character actor of mine, he has the wildest and most expressive eyes of any player in history. Griffith can do more with one upturned brow than Olivier can with a page of dialog. Audrey and Hugh both appeared in William Wyler films before and received Oscars for their performances, Audrey in Roman Holiday and Hugh in Ben-Hur. Audrey also did The Children's Hour with William Wyler as well.
And looming over all is the city of light, Paris which should have received some billing as well. Then again, that city never gives a bad performance on film.