How to Steal a Million *** (1966, Audrey Hepburn, Peter O’Toole, Eli Wallach, Hugh Griffith, Charles Boyer) – Classic Movie Review 5682

Peter O’Toole and Audrey Hepburn make a lovely couple and sail effortlessly though the 1966 caper film How to Steal a Million. 

You might expect something a little bit more polished and classier – maybe wittier and even a bit more substantial – from this cast and crew.

But the bright cast spark up writer Harry Kurnitz’s and producer-director William Wyler’s so-so light-hearted 1966 romantic comedy caper How to Steal a Million about a legendary art forger (Hugh Griffith) wanting to retrieve his copied Cellini Venus statue from the Paris gallery he has lent it to. The Venus was actually sculpted by Nicole’s forger grandfather.

His daughter Nicole (Audrey Hepburn) hires a society burglar called Simon Dermott (Peter O’Toole), who turns out to be a detective, to help to pull the million dollar statue heist on the Paris museum before it can do  tests on the Venus that would prove it a fake.

O’Toole and Hepburn make a lovely couple, and sail though it effortlessly, though they are often upstaged by wily old scene-stealers Charles Boyer (as O’Toole’s boss DeSolnay), Eli Wallach (as an art collector Davis Leland) and Griffith as Bonnet.

Also notable in the cast are Fernand Gravey, Marcel Dalio, Jacques Marin and Moustache.

The very mid-Sixties-style chic movie looks nice and glossy in Charles Lang’s cinematography. Hepburn’s clothes are designed by Givenchy.

How to Steal a Million is based on the 1962 story Venus Rising in Practise to Deceive by George Bradshaw.

Naturally, though this American film is set and filmed in France, the actors speak entirely in English.

Unexpectedly, with the stars at the height of their popularity and heist comedy films very much in vogue, it flopped at the box office. Costing $6.4 million, it took $4.4 million in cinema rentals, a shock for 20th Century Fox.

The cast are Audrey Hepburn as Nicole Bonnet, Peter O’Toole as Simon Dermott, Hugh Griffith as Charles Bonnet, Eli Wallach as Davis Leland, Charles Boyer as DeSolnay, Fernand Gravey as Grammont, Marcel Dalio as Paravideo, Jacques Marin as Head of Security, Roger Tréville as Auctioneer, Edward Malin [Eddie Malin] as Insurance Clerk and Moustache as Guard.

It runs 123 minutes.

The score is by John Williams.

It was released on 13 July 1966 in the US.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5682

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