how to steal a million

The digital age has ushered in an overabundance of film appreciation over film criticism. But a movie like How to Steal a Million (1966) is almost completely immune to a critical dissertation of its pros and cons. It exists simply to entertain, matching up two beautiful people (Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole) in a beautiful city (a modern but picturesque Paris) surrounded by beautiful things (artwork from masters like Renoir and Van Gogh)....one particular item of which they plot to steal from under the noses of several security guards, the Paris police force and an unbeatable electronic security system. This should be fun!

And it most assuredly is.

Director William Wyler (The Big Country) was a bit late to the heist film game. Two Pink Panther movies had already come and gone before he enlisted the writer of Peter Sellers' last installment (A Shot in the Dark) to adapt the long-gestating project as a vehicle for Hepburn, a star he'd helped to create in 1953's Roman Holiday. Pairing her with O'Toole turns out to be inspired late-career matchmaking, resulting in a breezy bit of Hitchcock-lite tension and romance.

Nicole Bonnet (Hepburn) is the daughter of a renowned art collector whose collection just happens to be made up entirely of forgeries - forgeries he himself created and sells off from time to time at a tidy profit. But when one of the phonies - a piece of Italian statuary loaned to the Paris museum - is to undergo chemical analysis as part of the usual insurance procedure, Nicole hatches a scheme to steal it back before the Bonnet family name is ruined and her father sent to prison.

The essential ingredient in the scheme is one Simon Dermott (O'Toole), a self-described society burglar whom Nicole catches in the act. Together they quickly put together a plan to outwit the guards and escape with the statue - and the Bonnet reputation - intact. And if it just so happens they collect on the million dollar insurance policy in the process...all the better!

How to Steal a Million relies more on the chemistry between its stars than the overall cleverness of their scheme. But that's a petty complaint when everyone is having this much fun. Hepburn quite simply never looked better, decked out in '60s mod-fashions that make the Bond girls at the time look like tramps by comparison. And O'Toole, channeling the charm of Cary Grant with some of the self-deprecating wit gleaned from Woody Allen's What's New Pussycat, makes a case he could have been a fine Bond on his own if given the chance. More to the point, they just fit well together, which comes in handy given their first romantic scene is set in a broom closet.

The heist itself owes more to good luck than good planning, but Wyler moves the action along so effortlessly that the audience isn't likely to care. Eli Wallach pops up as an obsessive-compulsive American millionaire who pursues both the sculpture and Nicole with equal fervor, but winds up coming in handy for the required happy ending. How to Steal a Million shouldn't have to apologize for being a two-hours of classy, escapist fun; as the kids say today, it should just be appreciated.

Twilight Time's 3000-copy limited edition blu-ray is as colorful and detailed as any modern hi-def release, which is really saying something for a 50-year old film that's not on the tip of most fans' tongues. Extras include an isolated music track (by composer John "Star Wars" Williams), audio commentary with Wallach and Catherine Wyler, 60-minute Biography special on Audrey Hepburn, original theatrical trailer and liner notes.