The Original "ITALIAN JOB" Movie. The Italian Job GB, 1969, 96mins, colon, Dir: Peter Coll
It stars Michael Caine, the embodiment of the working-class lad made good, and the Austin Mini-Cooper S, the car that won the Monte Carlo Rally three times (discounting the rulings of the untrustworthy French in 1966). Alternatively, it is a British crime-caper film in the tradition of The Lavender Hill Mob and The Wrong Arm of the Law, boasting Douglas Slocombe's colour cinematography and foreign location footage at the expense of a cohesive narrative; instead relying on impressive performances and very elaborate set pieces. In fact the narrative can be quite easily bisected — the first four/five reels detail the Ealing comedy type antics of an over-confident would-be master criminal and his hand-picked inept gang, the remainder being given over to the real raison d'être — the chase sequence, for without the pursuit the film may as well have stayed in London amongst the Met's S-types and 6/110s. The plot proper begins with Rossano Brazzi — whom we last saw crashing a Lamborghini Muira into a JCB after the opening credits —selling Charlie a plan to rob the city of Turin of a $4 million consignment of gold. To carry out this plan, Charlie seeks the financial aid of Mr Bridger (Noel Coward) who runs Britain's underworld from his gaol cell and also considers Charlie to be moderately incompetent.
Even after the funding is eventually given, the gang seem to specialise in crashing Mini-Coopers and demolishing bullion vans. Charlie at least knows the virtue of putting on a good front, favouring a silver DB4 Volante as his personal transport in contrast to 'The Heavies' — familiar from about every British crime film made in the '50s and '60s — who still use a Ford Thames Van, a vehicle fitted with one of Britain's most dreadful column shifts, rather than the latest in Transits.
As always, it is these incidental details that date the film, along with the 'chicks' in their M&S undergarments and the nominal female lead who has virtually nothing to do. Anyway, after a funeral scene (shot in Eire because of Noel Coward's tax status) and with a Daimler DR450 making a cameo appearance, the action shifts to the Continent and things begin to pick up pace, particularly for Euro-Box spotters. It is also at this point in the film that certain problems in the script begin to surface. It has often been stated that Troy Kennedy Martin's original screenplay was intended as a light satire of the English abroad, and whilst elements of this still work — Charlie blithely warning his troops that the Italians drive on the wrong side of the road' — the first meeting of Charlie and Altabani still lingers unpleasantly in the memory.
Yes, the Mafia have destroyed the DB4 (actually a mocked-up Alfa Romeo 2000 Spyder) plus two E-type 3.8 Coupes, but Charlie's invocation of reprisals against England's entire Italian community now appears less than hilarious — Powellite politics not being known for their lightness of touch.
The film has equal appeal for both owners of Mini-Coopers (all privately bought because BMC were not interested in supplying them) and Italian car enthusiasts, the latter inevitably annoyed at the lazy film journalists still perpetuating the old chestnut that Fiat rather magnanimously provided the police cars. As every motoring enthusiast knows, they were all Alfa Romeo Giulia TI saloons, and there's really little excuse for making such a crass mistake.
Given the use of Fiat's own factory in Turin, it is obvious that their products would dominate the location footage. Most of them would have been not unfamiliar to the British audience at the time — Fiat was the only car importer to boast a line-up as comprehensive as that of Austin or Vauxhall — and the street scenes are littered with the 500s, 600s, 850s 1100Rs plus the 1300/1500s and their successor the 124, a car sadly besmirched by its unfortunate USSR connotations. Sightings of the majestically be-finned 2300 saloon are less common and Lancia enthusiasts will wince at the appearance of a heavily dented Flaminia Coupe.
There's even the odd British import, such as a well-used Consul Classic saloon, finished in maroon no less. But of all the Fiats in the street scenes, nothing could compare with Raf Vallone's flotilla of Dino Coupes. The colour photography shows the red, white and blue Coopers to the best advantage as they career along Turin's piazzas and through tunnels (actually shot in Coventry).
The scene with the Bedford coach is utterly ingenious (although not without antecedents — Robbery and The League of Gentlemen) and the whole film has just about enough charm to overcome its more dated elements and to make one wish to snatch it from the jaws of film cultists.
And then there's the final scene, consciously or unconsciously encapsulating the state not only of the Britain's film industry, as the Americans prepared to decamp, but of her motor industry and even her national identity. The Italian Job was one of the last films to display such jaunty self-confidence in British products with a British leading man for nearly a decade.
