Postmaster

A couple of years ago a friend of mine killed himself. It was a shock to everyone that knew him. Apparantly he had amassed some debts through heavy cocaine use and his business was about to collapse. I was unaware he had any problems at all and the whole matter left me feeling very lost and depressed.

I told my wife but to her it was just a story. Like a piece of fiction. Maybe it was like that to me too. But it knocked the stuffing out of me. Almost instinctively I wanted to watch a film to take me out of myself. I chose The Italian Job.

The Italian Job is a caper movie of the highest order. I'm sure it is despised by most intellectuals due to its nationalism and sexism and whatever-else-isms but as I watched it unfold I started to feel myself again. Everything about the film is sunny. From the leading players to the minor roles. All the kinds of characters who, while seeming cliched, were like the people I had grown up knowing. Michael Caine is the perfect centre for the film. His character just gets pulled along by the freight train plot when, after being released from prison, a dead man talks to him from a super 8 movie and entices him to pull off one of the biggest raids ever.

Quincy Jones' soundtrack shifts from the melodic opening theme to the joyous celebration of all that is British in the final reel mixing football chant to music hall styles. In fact in every sense this film celebrates life.

After watching it to the cliffhanger ending "I've got an idea." My mood had shifted. I hadn't escaped the reality of my friends suicide but it no longer enveloped me.

I thought that what was significant about his life wasn't the despair or the depression that led to him taking his own life, but all the laughter and good times that had preceded it. That life itself was a sort of celebration. The problems and the ugliness wouldn't go away but there were these moments that were sunny and joyful and it was up to everyone which they chose to live with.

I'd trade all the meaningful gloom in the history of the cinema quite gladly for those few films which, flimsy or not, celebrate life. It is these films I owe a debt of gratitude to.

Jago.

Polynikes

Apparantly it has now been re-made with Mark Wahlburg (who starred in the spectacular failure to re-make Planet of the Apes) & BMW Minis and all - it starts off in Venice & ends with the car chase scene in........wait for it.......LOS ANGELES!!!!

I think Britain should strike back & re-make The Godfather with Bob Hoskins in the Marlon Brando role, Sean Bean in the James Cann role & Jude Law in the Al Pacino role & re-set the whole show in Birmingham ('brum accents and all).

If Hollywood ruins ONE more great British movie, Tony Blair should resurrect Ealing Studios and make a carry on version of every American classic.

[ 14. April 2003, 02:49: Message edited by: Polynikes ]

Gibbie

I know...What's with that?

At least the Mini is back. thumbs_u

Brian Brandt

"I'd trade all the meaningful gloom in the history of the cinema quite gladly for those few films which, flimsy or not, celebrate life. It is these films I owe a debt of gratitude to."

I totally agree with your sentiment.

Recently, I was listening to National Public Radio, which has in-depth feature stories on a wide variety of topics. This particular one was about a new film (don't recall the name) made by a Palestinian about the hardships imposed by the Israeli occupation. The movie ends in tragedy, with the main character destroying a tree in the center of his village. Comment and interviews about this film went on at great length, noting the importance of the material, the fine acting, the social significance.

All well and good, but still, just another re-statement of the same entrenched positions they (on both sides) have been slugging it out over for the last fifty years. Did we need yet another glum example of how bad things are so we have an excuse to start shooting again?

A modest proposal for some independent-thinking filmmaker in the Middle East: A buddy movie about an Israeli and a Palestinian on some implausible quest. What these people really need a good belly-laugh comedy.

deckard

I agree fully with your sentiments,also,I think a large majority of film fans can get bogged down in being over critical- i.e.the direction was this,the script was that,the acting could have been so and so etc.In my opinion there are times when we should sit back and remember that film is a distraction,an entertainment,a medium of fun and enjoyment and taken as a whole the greatest artform ever created(especially the british ones!)

"and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock"

mysteriesofedgarwallace

To me 'The Italian Job' depicts the very end of an era when Britain was still Great.

England were World Cup holders, you could buy a brand new 'E' Type Jag (albeit a Series2), the Beatles were still together (just), power cuts and the 3 day week were yet to come.

Britain still had a manufacturing industry (again.....just) and still made the odd decent film......just....!

Marky B

I know the original Italian Job is hard to forget,but I found watching the new version a lot better by not trying to compare it with the Michael Caine version. The original had style and class - the new one was for me a good,watchable film.
Ta Ta
MArky B

I once shot an elephant in my pyjamas - how he got in my pyjamas,I'll never know

DB7

Must-have movies: The Italian Job (1969)

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 16/02/2007

Robert Colvile reviews a classic that every film-lover will want to own

As the Mini Coopers rock from side to side along a sewage tunnel, with £4 million in gold bullion in their boots and Quincy Jones's infectious score swinging away in the background, ask yourself this: is there a film - certainly a British film - that delivers a greater infusion of pure joy than The Italian Job?
A mini in The Italian Job
Where the cars are the stars: The Italian Job

The cast of this chirpily patriotic movie is led by Michael Caine, reprising his Alfie persona as Charlie Croker, a dollybird-friendly criminal who inherits a plan to rob the FIAT factory in Turin by causing the world's largest traffic jam.

But if Caine embodies Sixties cool, his presence is deliciously counterbalanced by the old-world charm of Noël Coward as Mr Bridger, the urbane, royalty-obsessed crimelord who treats his prison as his castle.

Yet the true stars are the cars, in particular the red, white and blue Minis used to remove the loot from the scene, whizzing through the priceless palazzos and down the marble stairs with an abandon that makes the film's shooting seem as much a joke on the Italians as its plot.

Admittedly, The Italian Job has its problems. Benny Hill's perverted computer scientist, Professor Peach, seems to have wandered in from the wrong movie, and the casual sexism and jingoism, however tongue in cheek, have not aged well.

Similarly, its journey into Saturday-afternoon ubiquity has spawned endless repetition of its catchphrases (all together now: "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"), while its effortless style, and the glamour and comedic tics it lends its gangsters, are to blame for much of Guy Ritchie's career.

Yet the pure enjoyment it offers more than counterbalances these flaws. More to the point, the tight, witty script by Z Cars writer Troy Kennedy-Martin, smooth direction from Peter Collinson (Coward's godson), and above all that glorious extended escape sequence, made by Jones's wonderful score, power this film to a literal cliff-hanger ending that has become as iconic as the Mini Cooper itself. Just don't tell anyone that the drivers were actually French.

Jim

I think that I read somewhere that the film company had to buy the Minis themselves, as the good old BMC were too tight and too stupid to see free advertising for a great little motor - no wonder the British car industry wizened away to nothing!

Good morning boys.

MarkG

Interestingly, I believe Fiat offered them all the cars they wanted if they're replace the Minis with Fiats... but they stuck with Minis instead even though they had to buy them with their own money.

Great movie though.

penfold

Fiat gave the production the police cars instead...and the use of their test track - on the factory roof ....

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

djdave

Fiat fell over themselves to help with the filming. It's their factory the Minis jump across...

Freddy

Came across this on Youtube, this comment accompanies the wonderful opening scene with Matt singing Don Black's On Days Like These


Freddy

stevie boy

and matt monroe singing days like these, superb observation

johng

I was told some time ago that the mini coopers used in the film were NOT the same cars which were tossed from the bus. I understand the latter were just three old clapped out minis.

Some years ago not far from here, I was taken to the garden of someone who does up old cars who pointed to a mini cooper sitting there and I was told it was one of the cars from the film? I was shown the car log book and the owner said if I had a look at the film I would see that the registration number was the same as one of the cars.

Yet other stories exist which suggest that none ofthe cars survived into preservation . Perhaps someone knows better.