La grande rapina

I first saw this film when still at school, in my final year. At that time, I thought it was a passable "western" but it lacked the Hollywood glitz to which I'd become accustomed and acculturated.

Fifty years haven't dimmed my appreciation of the story and film, but those years have readjusted my focus on the quality and veracity of the production. By today's digital standards, the colour saturation is just too pronounced, but given the times, it was ideal to convey the stark contrasts of the Australian outback – the parched land, the unrelenting sun and the tough times experienced by the settlers.

The story is basic: two brothers get caught up in cattle rustling with Captain Starlight (Peter Finch) who gets caught eventually, while the brothers escape to go off to the Bendigo gold fields to make honest money, they hope. Unhappily for them, they get embroiled in a bank robbery staged by Starlight and his gang and, once again, are on the run, one and all.

And, that sets up the final action sequence whereby a large body of troopers attacks the mountain hideout of Starlight's gang, with inevitable results. That shootout is still one of the finest ever put to film: realistic and beautifully photographed from many camera angles, providing the viewer a box seat of what such a battle must be like.

Peter Finch acts superbly: witty, urbane, considerate, competent and very tough – all in one. Who really knows what the real Starlight was like, the one who actually roamed and robbed the areas around southern Queensland and northern New South Wales? I think Finch pulls off a reasonable portrayal.

The rest of the cast is adequate to very good, with Maureen Swanson the standout performer as Kate Morrison, the woman spurned by Dick Marston (Ron Lewis); not a woman to be tossed aside, as he finds out. David McCallum, in his fifth movie, plays the other brother, Jim Marston who gets involved with Kate's sister, Jean (Jill Ireland).

As a piece of Australiana, it's worth the time to see. As a story about the bush ranging days of early Australia, it has its moments, particularly the final shootout.

Recommended for all.

It's....er, a western. A British made western......set in Australia.

Furrowed and weathered, Laurence Naismith has spent his years on the wrong side of the law, leading the life of the quickening heartbeat with each approach of horses hooves and every knock on his front door. Hardly a role model, elder son Ronald Lewis is cut from the same cloth, yearning for adventure, contrasting with David McCallum's more sensitive, responsible disposition. Throwing in their lot with notorious Captain Starlight (Peter Finch), they steal cattle and rob a coach, before the lure of romance prompts the pair to go straight as gold prospectors. The past, it seems, is never far behind. Once a marked man, always a marked man.

Re-setting the Wild West in Australia was an interesting idea and like most 'westerns' of the era it's shot in vivid colour. Much like a click and collect supermarket shop during the Pandemic, its full of substitutions: The Outback for The Nevada Desert, stealing for rustling, Bush ranger for outlaw, kangaroo for coyote, troopers for sheriff's posse. Unfortunately, Peter Finch, Laurence Naismith and Ronald Lewis are NO substitute for Lee Marvin, Richard Boone and Jack Elam.

'Robbery Under Arms' is devoid of a clear hero figure, the single bastion of goodyism. Just an endless carousel of faceless troopers. It's little more than a curio, a period piece. The kinda movie that's worth watching.....ONCE!

Awkward in fitting English actors into a faraway setting, and yes, over-coloured in Technicolor: so this English director caught some of the paradoxes of Australia, the raw young country less than 100 years settled in Boldrewood's yarn. Three things Jack Lee (who died only c2003) understood and expressed more fully than perhaps anyone, English or Australian. First, the wild irresponsibility of the bushranger released from society's constraints (Peter Finch's manic side caught this brilliantly). Second, the special eternal power of the ancient bush country (in this case, the Flinders Ranges, also the setting for 2002's The Tracker). Third, however briefly seen, the deep calm and perfect attunement to his country of the native man Warrigal, so that in this raw place, it is only the dispossessed who has ownership - a nod here to the real-life horseman Johnny Cadell, a screen natural.

A western in everything but name and not a bad one at that, Jack Lee's "Robbery Under Arms" is set during the same period as most westerns, the 1860's, but in Australia where Peter Finch's Captain Starlight leads a small gang of outlaws stealing cattle and robbing banks. Ronald Lewis and David McCallum are the brothers who follow their father into the gang looking for a bit of excitement. Lee makes good use of the Australian landscape which is superbly photographed by Harry Waxman and he never skimps on the action which is plentiful. No classic but very enjoyable nevertheless.

Although officially the star, Peter Finch as bushranger Captain Starlight is really only peripheral to the narrative, whose myriad twists and turns clearly mark it as an adaptation of a novel.

Probably the closest Rank ever came to a western, many of the staple ingredients - prospecting for gold, cattle stealing, robbing stagecoachs - are included; but thanks to Matyas Sieber's score it certainly doesn't sound like one.

As usual we get no sense of the oppressive heat and enormous creepie-crawlies found Down Under, but the presence of a pair of aborigines in the cast makes a refreshing change.