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QUIDS IN!
"How can the charge be robbing a bank? We haven't robbed it yet!"
There's nothing the media relish more (apart maybe from one of their number getting the sack) than a heist gone wrong. And the ensuing combination of Big Important News with rather comedic overtones in which these stories are nearly always related must be, we're sure, down to the legacy of one of our favourite cinematic sub-genres, the once-flourishing but now sadly moribund caper movie, that totally unrealistic world in which Big Crime becomes a big game. So here we'll attempt a very sketchy run-through of some of the milestones and obscurities of the format in its myriad forms, from the outright bungling crook comedies to the more wry I-love-it-when-a-plan-comes-together satisfaction of the great complicated heist thrillers.
It's Jules Dassin's Parisian noir RIFIFI of 1954 that's always credited with inventing the caper comedy, and indeed the centrepiece, half-hour, wordless safecracking scene sets the tone for all that's to follow, including Dassin's own follow-up, the stupendous, Peter Ustinov-suspending Istanbul jewel heist in TOPKAPI. Another main element of the caper film, the chief villain assembling a rag-tag crew of oddballs with various and preferably clashing personalities and motives, came courtesy of fellow nouvelle vague merchant Jean-Pierre Melville's casino heist epic BOB LE FLAMBEUR, its central plot conceit better known to English-speaking audiences through the Rat Pack's virtual remake, the wondrously self-indulgent OCEAN'S ELEVEN, which is brilliant for all the wrong, and a few of the right, reasons. The chances of any backslapping gang of perpetually half-cut entertainers with untied bow-ties round their necks being able to co-ordinate themselves sufficiently to rob five Vegas casinos at once on New Year's Eve is so gloriously unlikely that disbelief is never in the remotest danger of being suspended, but it's a caper comedy, therefore normal dramatic rules do not apply, so all the fluffed lines and sudden disappearance of characters due to hangovers don't really matter. And of course, the last-minute tits-up ending (with *that* campy exchange of incredulous glances down the chain of command) wraps the film up in an entirely appropriate manner. Also working from the same French original, the less-celebrated SEVEN THIEVES had Edward G Robinson as a retired professor masterminding a complex heist on a Monte Carlo gambling den, with Rod Steiger, Joan Collins and a sax-playing Eli Wallach among the variously-skilled titular seven. The key text in Brit film terms for this area of the genre is probably THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN, but the hyper-intelligent mastermind angle reached its logical conclusion with David Niven's top-heavy criminal genius in THE BRAIN, a double-cross-filled pan-European caper also enlisting the services of Wallach.
British capers are, as a rule, far more downbeat. No all-knowing mastermind props up the plot of THE LAVENDER HILL MOB - down-at-heel bank clerk Alec Guinness and seedy souvenir artist Stanley Holloway (with help from crims-for-hire Alfie Bass and Sid James) hatch the plan to smuggle out gold bullion in the form of tacky-looking model Eiffel Towers, which get mixed up with the real, lead-centred article and sold, necessitating a frantic reclamation spree. Possibly the most amazing thing about this compact little masterpiece is that writer TEB Clarke managed to assemble an actual Bank of England committee to enquire as to how best to steal gold bullion from their own vaults as part of his research - now, if someone used *that* premise as a basis for a caper film, who'd believe it? The word 'bungling' looms large in any description of British capers (the unimpeachable THE LADYKILLERS, while more concerned with the aftermath of the caper than the execution, obviously deserves mention here), not so much out of some "crime doesn't pay" high moral tone as the general notion that, well, everyone's a bit crap really, including the thieves. In the great TOO MANY CROOKS, Sid James teams up with George Cole, Bernard Bresslaw and Joe Melia for a botched attempt to do over Terry-Thomas' house, only to rehash their plan in desperation and try and kidnap his daughter instead. Only they accidentally make off with his wife. And Thomas doesn't want her back. Fortunately, the ridiculed spouse helps them pull off the initially planned robbery as revenge on the cad, but even then things singularly fail to go the gang's way. The inveterate uselessness of the small-time felon rises to Carry On levels in Peter Rogers/Gerald Thomas comedy THE BIG JOB, with James now the feckless gang leader, advising fellow members Dick Emery and Lance Percival to stash their loot in an old oak tree as the rozzers close in on them, only to find, after coming out of chokey, that a police station has been built around the tree. Cue spying on the nick via stolen seaside telescopes from a B&B ("Is that all I get for a tanner?"), while the police, in the form of Jim Dale and - natch - Deryck Guyler, hover suspiciously nearby.
More gung-ho plotting and planning in a British vein is to be had in Michael Crichton's self-adapted, vaguely truth-based Victorian comedy THE FIRST GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, with dapper stovepipe-hatted gent Sean Connery teaming up with bewhiskered cockney cracksman Donald Sutherland and corsetted bit of fluff Lesley Anne Down (plus the likes of railwayman Michael Elphick and slippery contortionist Wayne 'Clean Willy' Sleep) to concoct an immensely satisfying plan to hoick army payroll bullion from a moving steam train. Forgeries of four separate keys, slithering through railings, the seduction of a bank manager, Sutherland impersonating a corpse with the help of a dead cat, and Connery (with no stunt double) doing bits of highly dangerous business on a train roof, all add up to a fascinating anatomy of a caper, with, if anything, the intense, timed-to-the-second preparation being more thrilling than the unnecessarily outlandish finale. And on a similar tip, that estimable hind leg-walker Rory Calhoun assembled a group of old lags (including Leslie Nielsen) to rob an Air Force base payroll in DAYTON'S DEVILS.
Taking hoary old chestnut THE ITALIAN JOB as read, if we may, we feel mention should be made here to that other Michael Caine caper, GAMBIT, in which Caine, having dreamt the perfect way to get hold of oriental billionaire Herbert Lom's priceless sculpture, enlists Shirley MacLaine, a dead ringer for Lom's former wife, to act as the titular gambit and enable them to case his top security joint. Once again, reality goes nowhere near as smoothly as the dream. Slightly more success is to be had in the other *other* Caine caper film, the Bryan Forbes-directed DEADFALL, in which yer man cracks a safe full of diamonds in a millionaire's chateau while said mogul is away watching a concert, allowing for a decidedly Rififi-esque dialogue-free extended sequence cutting between the concert and the break-in. More decorative robbery set to lush musical scores props up the split screen-festooned THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR, a 90% style, 10% plot '60s period piece in which Steve McQueen masterminds the perfect bank heist, in which none of his stooges know the identities of any of the others, and has his machinations retraced by insurance investigator Fay Dunaway in the well-respected crypto-erotic chess game sequence. McQueen, of course, later paired up with Ali McGraw to rob a bank at the behest of corrupt sheriff Ben Johnson in THE GETAWAY.
More intrigue of a romantic nature underpins HOW TO STEAL A MILLION, in which Audrey Hepburn enlists cat burglar Peter O'Toole to nick a statue from a museum before it's revealed as a forgery. To be honest, this one's not that hot, mainly because the caper itself is a tad weak- the central conceit revolves round triggering the infra-red beams with a boomerang then hiding, so that the guards become so bored with it seemingly going off for no reason they unplug the alarm - but the script is packed full of high class banter (and as chief guard, the great continental comedian Moustache gets to have plenty of comedy business with his, er, moustache) and it all fits together perfectly to provide that all-important satisfaction factor. Which brings us to THE HOT ROCK, an acknowledged classic of the genre, with Robert Redford assembling the requisite team of contrasting personalities (nutty mechanic, taciturn explosives man etc.) for the righteous liberation of a sacred African gem from the Brooklyn Museum. The initial diversion - nutso mechanic fakes a spectacular car crash in front of the museum to tempt the guards away from their post, aided by gang member George Segal as a phoney medic - is textbook stuff, as is the inevitable cock-up - Segal (now dressed as a security guard) ends up trapped inside the hefty display case surrounding the jewel, and calls on real security guards to help. After a period in prison (and a marvellous cameo by Zero Mostel as the explosives expert's lawyer) the gang find themselves in a position similar to that of Sid James, when they discover said bombsmith, who swallowed the jewel in the museum, has left it hidden in the police station, precipitating another tables-turned heist. Screenwriting pastmaster William Goldman was responsible for the script of this little gem, and it goes to show how much the caper comedy relies on multiple plot reversals and revelations to keep the constant donning-of-disguises and crawling-through-air-ducts action fresh.
If, however, your script isn't packed with twists and turns, one overarching conceit, and a smattering of over-the-top set and costume design, should get your caper to stand out. Witness THE ANDERSON TAPES, wherein a rugless Sean Connery enlists a young Christopher Walken and a screamingly camp Martin Balsam to roll up to Dyan Cannon's luxury block of flats in a removals van and empty the place of valuables, little knowing that his every moved is being overseen by shadowy governmental organisations. Why, it's never made entirely clear, as the film degenerates into one big pop art paranoia fest, so the satisfactory plot closure goes for a burton but, hey, it looks great! Which is more than can be said for Al Pacino's shabby bunch of no-hopers in true-life bank hold up catalogue of errors DOG DAY AFTERNOON. To fund his partner's sex-change, Pacino and pals hold staff and customers at gunpoint, or at least try to, as mundane obstacles pile up - the gang struggling to remove their shotguns from concealing boxes with a the requisite flourish, hostages needing a piss, the lack of any actual money in the bank at the time - and eventually the police disgrace themselves and a superposse of TV reporters descend on the bank, giving Pacino the chance to indulge in awkward mock-heroics. All unbelievably stupid stuff that, needles to say, never happens in fictional caper films, which makes it all the more powerful.
Truth may be dafter than fiction, but fiction can certainly have a good crack at silliness, and the caper format is probably the most fruitful of all genres in this respect. Take $ (or DOLLARS, but, this being 1971, typographical tricksiness was in), which employs a convoluted plot to escalate confusion. Hamburg-based bank security chief Warren Beatty observes various felons stashing their ill-gotten gains in adjoining safe deposit boxes, and hooks up with Goldie Hawn, a hooker who "does" for all said villains, to obtain the keys to the boxes and rip off a million, er, dollars, safe in the knowledge that the police are unlikely to be alerted by the hapless heistees. The crims, natch, have other ideas, and a delirious half hour pan-Germanic chase results, with the criminals trying to steal back the stolen money Beatty stole from them. Cynics would argue that's not all Beatty stole, as a very similar plot underpins archly-shot British eccentric caper PERFECT FRIDAY from a year previously. In this one Stanley Baker is the bank insider with the scheme, and louche, decadent but cash-strapped upper-crust couple David Warner and Ursula Andress are roped in to help him make off with 200 grand from the deposit boxes. Chase scenes are dropped here for character-based humour (the tension between stiffo middle-class Baker and outlandishly dressed Warner, plus a sprinkling of sexual intrigue between both vis-a-vis Andress) and plenty of-their-time crash zooms and jump cuts from director 'Very' Peter Hall. Printed money is the temptation for a US mint employee in WHO'S MINDING THE MINT? After accidentally losing 50 grand down the waste disposal, Jim Hutton looks to make up the deficit by breaking into the mint under cover of darkness and printing off the necessary to replenish federal stock, only to find the gang he ends up assembling (including Joey 'Ocean's' Bishop, pawn shop owner Milton Berle, Bob 'Gilligan' Denver and Jamie 'Klinger' Farr) each wanting an additional run of notes to be printed off. In true bloated caper comedy style, the film builds inexorably to a 'sod the plot' madcap chase, this time by sea, after the loot.
THE BRINK'S JOB, meanwhile, goes back to outsider dealings, with Italian Bostonian Peter 'He gonna buy some sausages' Falk pinpointing the many flaws in security giant Brink's armour, with the help of Peter 'Ritz' Boyle and Warren Oates as mouthy cracksman 'Specs' O'Keefe. Michale Cimino delivered the one film of his we can bear to watch repeatedly with the great THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT, in which ageing crim Clint Eastwood is persuaded out of his clergy-impersonating 'retirement' by ol' buddy George Kennedy, and hooks up with young car thief Jeff Bridges for One Last Job. Lanscape photography and uneasily gay undertones add to the unpretentious fun. In a similar bracket is satirical crime romp FUN WITH DICK AND JANE, in which freshly redundant yuppie George Segal and wife Jane Fonda are forced to pay for their new swimming pool by holding up bastions of big business that formerly provided for their lifestyle. Even before they get a standing ovation for holding a telecoms company boss at gunpoint, you get the heavily satirical message.
The more the caper film grew in popularity, the more new entries had to find quirky variations on an increasingly familiar theme. In 1974's BANK SHOT, for instance, a sort-of sequel to The Hot Rock, George C Scott and pals take advantage of the temporary rehousing of a bank in a mobile home, by stealing the bank, and robbing it in a safe, out-of-the-way location. It's a knowingly daft premise, but not the film's only joker up the sleeve - Scott escapes from prison on a bulldozer, tailed by a police officer on a golf cart, and another chase scene is played out in reverse, for the sheer hell of it. And the film offers two stock '70s bloated redneck character actors - Clifton 'Live and Let Die' James and Sorrell 'Boss Hogg' Booke - for the price of one. It's a mess, but a firmly enjoyable one. More restrained - necessarily - is GOING IN STYLE, which makes the bankrobbers into grouchy old age pensioners, to wit Lee 'Method' Strasberg, Art 'Chilli Con' Carney and George 'Fiddles' Burns, who decide to commit the caper out of sheer bored frustration with seniorhood. Getting progressively more desperate, badly-dubbed Filipino actioner BLIND RAGE assembles a multi-ethnic gang of five - yep - blind men to pull off a heist, while THE DOBERMAN GANG sees an embittered ex-con train up a squad of dogs to perform the theft, which they do, but peg it with the takings.
All-girl heist comedy HOW TO BEAT THE HIGH CO$T OF LIVING (note the extra-alphabetical tomfoolery rearing its ugly head once more) was slightly more successful. Susan Saint James, Jane Curtin and Jessica Lange, their lives variously made a misery by late '70s galloping inflation, hatch a plan to steal a huge amount of cash that the local shopping mall is collecting in a huge plastic ball for a guess-how-much-and-win-it competition, by tunnelling under it, cutting a hole in the base and hoovering up the notes. Some amusing riffs on the housewives-do-crime premise - domestic appliances employed as burglary tools, having to bring the kids along when a babysitter calls off etc. - and a nice feeling of a now truly bygone era, keep it one notch above high concept desperation. As the seventies drew to a close, so, to all intents and purposes, did the caper film. The British end was kept up by Ian McShane and Warren Clarke as lovable fascists bankrolling their party with the proceeds of THE GREAT RIVIERA BANK ROBBERY, while appearing-in-this-A-to-Z-a-lot Aussie director Bruce Beresford turned in an ockertastic rough and ready armoured car insider job yarn with MONEY MOVERS, featuring a very young Bryan Brown, Terence 'Doug' Donovan and loudmouth Bluey star and Aussie cultural legend, good old Lucky Grills.
Back in the home of the caper comedy, US audiences sadly failed to thrill to quirky comedy THE IN-LAWS, in which mild-mannered orthodontist Alan Arkin invites nutball father of his prospective son-in-law Peter Falk (again) to dinner, resulting in him becoming an unwitting stooge in the latter's currency printing scam, leading to a precipitous flight to a ludicrous South American banana republic presided over by Richard 'the swami off All of Me' Libertini's screwball general, complete with second-in-command hand puppet. But these were dying gasps of the genre - perhaps the decline in box office through the '80s had something to do with killing off the zany spendthrift caper film, maybe it was the rise of a slightly more gritty depiction of the criminal underworld, or maybe they'd just run out of variations on the theme. Of course, now we're seeing something of a resurgence, but in the worst possible way, via the imagination-starved remake - Ocean's Eleven, The Getaway, Thomas Crown and The Italian Job have all had high-gloss, low-fun overhauls, and both The Anderson Tapes and Fun With Dick and Jane are rumoured to be next in line. But for now, we're still taking as the de facto closing chapter in the caper movie story that daring theft of Diana Rigg's priceless diamond in 1981's THE GREAT MUPPET CAPER. "We'll catch those thieves red-handed!" "What colour are their hands now?" Ah, the caper comedy - truly a film genre that has it all.
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