The Italian Job [1969]

Director

Peter Collinson

The greatest Brit-flick crime caper comedy of all time, 1969's The Italian Job towers mightily above its latter-day mockney imitators. After Alfie but before Get Carter Michael Caine is the hippest ex-con around, bedding the birds (several at a time) and spouting immortal one-liners ("You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"). The inheritor of a devious plan to steal gold bullion in the traffic-choked streets of Turin, Caine recruits a misfit team of genial underworld types--including a lecherous Benny Hill and three plummy public-schoolboy rally drivers--and uses the occasion of an England-Italy football match as cover for the heist.

In his final screen appearance, Noel Coward joyfully sends up his own patriotic persona, and there are small though priceless cameos from the likes of Irene Handl and John Le Mesurier. But The Italian Job's real stars are the three Mini Coopers--patriotically decorated red, white and blue--that run rings round every other vehicle in an immortal car-chase sequence, which preserves forever the British public's love affair with the little car. Quincy Jones provided the irreverent music, naturally, while the cliffhanger ending thumbs its nose at anything so un-hip as a resolution. It's all unashamedly jingoistic--ridiculously, gleefully, absurdly so--but the whole sums up the joie de vivre of the 1960s so perfectly that future historians need only look here to learn why the decade was swinging.

On the DVD: The Italian Job disc contains three all-new documentaries--"The Great Idea" (conception), "The Self-Preservation Society" (casting), and "Get a Bloomin' Move On" (stunts)--which dovetail into a good 68-minute "making of" featurette. Contributors include scriptwriter Troy Kennedy Martin and Producer Michael Deeley, who also crops up on the sporadically interesting commentary track with author of The Making of The Italian Job, Matthew Field. The deleted "Blue Danube" waltz scene is also included, with optional commentary. The print is a decent anamorphic transfer of the original 2.35:1 ratio, and the soundtrack has been remastered to Dolby 5.1. The animated Mini Cooper menus set the tone perfectly. --Mark Walker