L'arnaqueuse

A film about a complicated bank robbery. Doesn't sound too exciting does it? It starts very well with particularly stylish look and intriguing set up. The surprising thing is, that it continues like this throughout. Some complain about Peter Hall's 'clumsy' direction and I admit there are one or two moments when you wonder, why he did this or that but in the main its fine. I also imagined the robbery might get a bit tedious but no and we even get some humour, which considering how well Warner and Andress deal with it, we could perhaps have done with some more. But no matter, Andress shines throughout this film and the fact that she is naked for a lot of it is simply a bonus. Stanley Baker works very well with her, I wasn't sure about bed scenes with the pair of them, but its all good and this has to be one of his very best performances. Warner is maybe the only person who is a bit inconsistent but then considering the personae he has to convey he can be forgiven.

An excellent, intricate bank heist involving three uneasy partners (baker, andress and warner) who plot a raid on the vaults of baker's firm. The plan is aborted on several tries amidst great tension, until the elements finally fall into place on a "perfect friday". The added suspense of who will double cross who, along with a great finale, make for a fun film that has aged well in the subsequent hi-tech

Well I won't give the ending away folks, but you will see it coming a MILE OFF!!

Stanley Baker, in his last film performance, plays a tired, jaded under manager in a bank he's worked at for the past ten thousand years. He longs to escape the futile tedium of work, but is, on the surface at least resigned (and apparently content) to working out his days in a gold fishbowl office where his superiors can see him but he can't see them.

'I'm poor and broke' he sighs as he neatly summarises his attitude to 'work'. If we all have to do it (as most of us sadly do) we might as well acquire as much financial gain as we can. Very early on, it's clear that Baker's character is already painfully aware that he has gone as far as he is going to go, and that alternative action is required if he is not to give way to perpetual professional atrophy.

So, in comes Britt (can't think where they got that foreign sounding name or accent from, eh chaps). I disagree with some who say that Andress can't act. True, her range is limited, but so were those of luminaries like Bogart, so I feel it's a little unfair to admonish her professional credentials in this way. Also, let's not deny that there are worse things to clock within the cinematic pantheon that Andress's 'undress', and there's plenty of that here. I make this point from a purely 'cinematic' perspective, you understand.

True, the characters are all pretty unlikeable, Warner's in particular, yet it's interesting to see him turn from repellent upper class knob into Baker's whipping boy, mysteriously travelling up and down the country for no apparent reason. (What was THAT all about?) His gesture of defiance towards the end just comes across as toothless, when it's obvious to all who the real winner of the piece is going to be....

Anyway, not bad as it goes, but far from perfect. I always love films for this era (1969-72), just for the 'feel' of the piece, and the washed out yet oddly warm feel of the print itself. As one other reviewer said, there are still traces of 'swinging' London to be found here (in the feel of the film and knowing it was made in 1970), whereas by 1972, that eponymous decade had cinema well and truly contained within it's er' 'distinctive' sartorial grip. We're on the cusp here folks, and all the better for it.

Worth watching, but don't expect to remember it tomorrow.

Still very well worth watching 50+ years since it was made and it gives us a look at London of yesteryear with all the now classic cars to admire. Very entertaining from start to finish with the audience wondering often what was going to happen next.

Did I predict the ending correctly, no I didn't and I was sure that I was on the right track.

Great performances all round with Stanley, unusually, in a non tough guy role. An original plot, or original to me at least, which runs along very pleasantly with no bits that drag along.

The time passes quickly so it is an an enjoyable watch and not just because of Ursula's frequent habit of taking her clothes off.

A disgruntled London bank manager plans an ingenious crime: stealing a fortune from his own bank. For help, he enlists the services of an Old Etonian fop and his beautiful Swiss consort. Complex patterns of duplicity are woven as this 'eternal triangle' of characters sets about its plan of deceit.

Peter Hall and Stanley Baker, director and star respectively, are in pot-boiler mode for this unassuming little British crime thriller. Made in the year that the swinging sixties ended and The Beatles split, the project retains a distinct whiff of 'groovy' hangover, but lacks the charm of (say) 'The Italian Job'.

Hall directs with trendy panache, crash-cutting between locations and playfully chopping the time sequence. The protracted 'wooing' of the two accomplices is told as two discrete stories spliced together by jump-cuts, with almost stream-of-consciousness linkage (Graham's tie is commented upon, so we move without explanation to the circumstances in whih he acquired it). Similarly, Graham meets Britt for a date in broad daylight on the lawn of the Wellington Monument, then the action jumps to Britt in a flamboyant orange negligee. Again, Britt 'unfreezes' from a still frame, frantically pulling off her clothes in the lobby of the new flat, and it is several minutes before this is explained, in a sequence which shows Britt's activities leading up to the freeze-frame.

Ursula Andress plays Britt, the frivolous babe, with a certain feline grace and a penchant for gentle comedy, but one cannot help suspecting that the part was written with Britt Ekland in mind. David Warner as Nick is suitably by turns languid and unruly, and dominates the vault inspection scene impressively, but ultimately fails to endear himself to the viewer. Baker's "Mr. Graham" somehow doesn't come off. He is too overtly macho to be convincing as a meek bank employee, and too sullen to engage our sympathy.

However, this is not a film which relies on overblown acting performances. The precise, almost mechanical directing reflects the immaculate planning of Graham's bank robbery. Just as the meticulous scheme is more important than the three pieces of human flotsam who execute it, so the artifice of film-making takes precedence over the performances.

The stifling routine of life in the National Metropolitan Bank is cleverly conveyed, with the managers partitioned like so many rabbits in their glass hutches. Into Graham's arid, stifled existence comes Britt, Lady Dorset, an exotic bird of paradise who dangles temptation before his jaded eyes. Graham's meeting with Nick is a chiaroscuro tour de force, the sombre patterns of bars and grilles ominously signalling the riskiness of the venture. When the three plotters finally meet face to face on the Thames pleasure cruiser, the psychological impact of the moment is cleverly underlined by the group's sudden emergence from the shadow of Westminster Bridge.

There has to be tension in bank job movies, and it is skilfully handled in this one. Graham hooks up a secret telephone handset in his office as Nick and Britt await the call which will activate the robbery. There is no incidental music, just the ticking of the couple's stopwatch and some background noises of office routine, and yet the sequence is totally gripping. The nervousness of Graham in the public call box is 'carried' to his accomplices in the nearby flat by means of a passing police siren, heard first by Graham and then by the others. The silence is electrifying as Graham helplessly awaits the outcome of the vault inspection.

Not all of the directorial tricks come off. Whether the bank manager's bowler hat and brolly are 'hommage' towards Alec Guinness in "The Lavender Hill Mob" or the clumsy, ritualistic anti-Establishment jibe so typical of the era, it just doesn't work. The reality is, bank managers did not dress like this, even in 1970, and whereas Guinness was a 'natural' in a bowler, Baker looks extremely uncomfortable.

Some of the camera techniques are questionable. The distracting zoom-in on each manager's namecard is obtrusive and unnecessary. The odd angles for the first dialogue between Graham and Britt are an echo of the 'fab' style current five years earlier, and they look wrong here. In fairness, though, the strange angles during the paper-and bank-notes switch may have some merit as a satirical comment on the worth of money. Cutting away from Graham's picnic to a passing jumbo jet (a sexy innovation in 1970) is supposed to encapsulate Graham's fantasies of escape, but it merely looks clumsy.

This film has its merits, and is intelligently executed on the whole, but ultimately it feels rather shallow and unsatisfying, an impression that is symbolised by the unconvincing 'surprise' ending.