The Boy Who Stole a Million

This is really a film aimed at a children's audience which is maybe why I didn't go to see it when it was released.Then again it may be that it only got a limited release on the National circuit.Directed by Ealing alumni Charles Crichton and featuring just two actors familiar to UK audiences in Warren Mitchell and George Coulouris.There is a lot of Spanish location work with the interiors and a lot of post sync- hing done at Pinewood..The story is a bit simple minded with the child stealing money from the bank where he works in order to pay for the repairs to his father's dog.Throughout his adventures he is accompanied by a rather fetching terrier.

Maurice Reyna is a bank messenger at a bank in Valencia. His father, Virgilio Teixeira, drives a cab. Until it breaks down. Mechanic Harold Kasket wants ten thousand pesetas for the repairs he's made. Teixeira doesn't have it, but it's a fiesta night, so he should do well. Kasket says no money, no cab.

Back at the bank, Reyna is instructed in the basics of a loan by his manager. Not having any collateral, Reyna simply takes a stack of bills when he leaves for lunch. He goes looking for his father to give them to him. It takes a while, but they notice a million missing pesetas. The police are called in. Soon enough, every pickpocket and similar crook in town is looking for what they imagine is an easy score.

Charles Crichton's movie is a sweet little thing, helped along by Douglas Slocombe's black-and-white camerawork. Or it likely would have been if it had been left alone. The copy I saw had been 'restored' and 'colorized until it looked like a faded hand-stenciled Pathe movie from 1906, full of blotches, flares of color that made the images unrecognizable,and so forth. Only the scene shot in Valencia at dawn looks good, and that looks amazing.

The fine job Charles Crichton did with Jon Whitely on 'Hunted' doubtless led to him being assigned by Bryanston to this slightly more ambitious variant on the sort of thing the Children's Film Foundation were starting to make (such as 'Hunted in Holland' the following year) depicting a pursuit involving a kid against a backdrop of travelogue. Fellow Ealing veterans Douglas Slocombe and Tristram Carey supplied the location photography and the gallumphing score.

Charles Crichton directed Ealing classics such as The Titfield Thunderbolt, The Lavender Hill Mob as well as his earlier "Hue and Cry". These latter two have similarities to TBWSAM in having an extended chase sequence.

However Crichton forsakes his customary very English locations for Spain. The film consists, with a brief preamble scene setting, of an hour long chase filmed in out and through the streets of Valencia as the young thief evades his pursuers. It must be the longest and one of the most inventive and superbly directed chase scenes in film history.

The chase involves the young "thief", his dog, crowds, cars, bicycles, groups on foot, animals, trams; apparently covering much of Valencia. It is a masterful handling of all these very different independent elements involved in the chase, the flow appearing seamlessly but of course infinitely choreographed by Crichton in an eclectic range of city locations. I am not sure that this combination of splendid cinematography, choice of location, direction and editing has been equalled.

A great performance from the lead, the young boy, Pasco, and (again a seamless) ensemble of British and Spanish cast. It is however rather let down by the writing, it is rather pedestrian and the resolution at the end disappointing.

Why it is never seen is a mystery. However at least it is being screened by Talking Pictures in the UK who seem to have a unique talent for picking out the gems that others have entirely missed. Why it received no awards is another mystery - perhaps connected with the first. The film so closely resembles one of those Continent classics of the era by one of the directorial Masters.

Is it that only the Continentals are acceptable doing The Continental - by the British as much as by anyone else?

Paco's father needs 10,000 Ptas to get his taxi back from the mechanic, and Paco has a job in a bank. In this fairy tale of early 60's Spain, the little boy just walks off with the money, and virtually the whole of the wrong side of town go looking for him, along with the police. Socially the film touches on the differences between the lives of the wealthy and the poor, the scavengers who live from sorting through rubbish dumps, the extravagant fiestas with their music, fireworks and dancing.