The Great Riviera Bank Robbery – 1979 | 102 mins | Thriller, Crime | Colour

Plot Synopsis

The Great Riviera Bank Robbery is an obscure heist film based on an actual occurrence, The Casse de Nice, in 1976 France. Ian McShane portrays the suave mastermind and bored right-wing anti-hero Albert Spaggiari.

Strongly committed to the ideals of a French right-wing group the OAS and a pan-European alliance known as ‘The Chain’ with links in high places all over the world, Bert (Ian McShane) conceives of a brilliant plan to obtain finances to buy arms in the cause of an eventual political take-over.

The scene is Nice, playground of the rich arid indolent. Over a long weekend, the vaults of the Societe Generale Bank in Nice will he stuffed with French francs. Bert knows a way in through a labyrinthine sewer system, a map of which he has obtained from a contact in the Town Hall. With colleagues from former fighting days in Indochina arid Algeria, Jean (Warren Clarke) and Serge (Christopher Malcolm), Bert reluctantly has to recruit a band of professional criminals led by Rocco (Stephen Greif) to assist in the robbery.

The dangerous elements of crime and passionate politics make for uneasy bedfellows. The criminals look on the job as merely a passport to money and the good life; they cannot understand Bert’s ideological approach summed up as ”without arms, without hatred, without violence.” As the job is planned with meticulous flawless detail, the personality clashes between the two factions become more defined. But the hoist goes perfectly and Bert finds has more money than he ever dreamed of, there’s ten million dollars: the biggest bank job in the world.

Though the police are completely baffled at first, the criminal members of the robbery team are soon throwing their money about with reckless abandon. As they‘re caught one by one. Bert manages to avoid capture but in the end be, too, is cornered.