Hold-up à Londres

What a wonderful short review from Stewart Naunton, above! I thought this was just a sleeper movie that only I appreciated.

The gentlemen in question are men who were very good in the War but not very successful or appreciated between wars. What is more appropriate than that they extract a long-deserved payment by plotting and executing this intricate caper?

This is a movie with a deep moral message. The robbers are in the right, and it is a real shame that these heroes, for heroes they are, have to get nabbed at the end of the film. By rights they should not only have got away with their caper, they should have taken back their country from the small minds and souls that had commandeered it.

"You Never Had It So Good," was Macmillan's slogan in '59, but these ex-officers seem to have missed out on the fun everyone else is having. They have been shabbily treated by their country and you just have to root for them as they recover their talents and daring.

The movie makes a good companion piece for Basil Dearden's 1961 film 'Victim', which is thematically dissimilar but very much the same in appearance and feel.

This is a heist film that really rises above the ante of its genre, due to the motivations behind the main characters. The characters are all former army officers, who were dismissed due to misconduct on their behalf, with the exception of the mastermind behind the robbery, who brings them all together. His name is Hyde, and he was halfway to becoming a full colonel before the army forced him into retirement. He is separated from his wife, and without army life, he has nothing left to do. So for the fun of it, rather than the money, he organises a heist.

The acting in the film is superb. The expressions that Jack Hawkins uses when playing Hyde signify that he is in it for the thrills rather than the loot. He looks on with joy, rather than stern, careful consideration, as he and his men organise everything that they need to do. He is in power again, since he is the head of the operation, and since he knows that everyone who he picks will want to go along. All of his men are not only crooks but ones with financial problems. And as the only one with plenty of money and no criminal record, he enjoys the idea that he can duck out at any time.

The supporting actors also show in the end that they are enjoying their work. While initially in it for the money, the return to army regulations - by which Hyde runs the operation - excites them. Nigel Patrick and Bryan Forbes are particularly good as the more suave members of the heist team. One problem though is that we never get to know the characters really well. They are defined by what we are told about them, rather than their actions, particularly with the Padre, played by Roger Livesey. A former quartermaster, he shows excitement at being able to take up the job again, but he is given very limited screen time, and his involvement with acts unbefiting a priest is oft mentioned, but his personality rarely shows anything more than that he is just another one of the men.

I find it rather odd that the film is marketed as a comedy. There is one section, when they raid the army, that is bouncing with humorous touches, and Gerald Harper, as a nervous army captain, gives off an excellent performance. The rest of the film though only has the slightest edge of humour, from Hyde badmouthing his wife to a rather awkwardly inserted cameo by Oliver Reed as a homosexual performer. The comedy is not important though, and the plot is intriguing enough as it is, but it does make the raiding the army section stand out, as it jars the film's mood and style.

If not flawless, it is still a very well made film. The rousing, grand music score is excellent, not just because it fits well over the action, but because it is sort of a parody of the scores of old war movies. The film looks great in black and white, and some of the sequences are very well shot. One example that stands out in memory is a shot where the camera goes through the walls of two different rooms, crabbing to the right, and swooping a little bit, almost like a person trying to not bump into a vase as he passes through a wall. The visual look of the film and the audio are just excellent, and well suited to the interesting screenplay.

Well ... if your name is "Half Colonel" Hyde, you thank Her Majesty very much, and take your future into your own hands!

Hyde, played to gruff perfection by Jack Hawkins, is supremely proud of his meticulous planning skills, gained and sharpened in a 25 year military career. Ignominiously pensioned off, he puts these strengths to good use in plotting a daring million-pound robbery.

As an ex-military man, Hyde is aware that his "operation" cannot succeed without putting together a squad of the very best experts. Displaying the kind of guile and ruthlessness that earned him his lofty rank, he also knows that it's rather handy if one's selected team has nothing much to lose.

The film opens by introducing us to Hyde's hand-picked candidates in turn - each receiving a mysterious invitation to lunch, stapled to one half of a crisp new fiver none of them can afford to ignore. A rum bunch they are, too - we witness a splendidly gloomy panorama of post- war London, scattered with promiscuous wives, doomed businesses, loveless marriages and good times going rapidly bad.

Enough, surely, to make a fellow wish he were back in the army - especially should he happen to be a bogus clergyman, an "odd man out" or simply a chap who always makes the same mistake twice ...

Was late-1950s Britain, in fact, a land fit for heroes? Does pride come before a fall? Or might crime, perhaps just this once, pay?

Join these esteemed Gentlemen for a wonderfully enjoyable caper movie, and find out for yourself! The story entertains (and possibly even informs) throughout - particularly to be relished is the interplay between Hawkins and the always-watchable Nigel "Old Darling" Patrick.

Notwithstanding a youthful Oliver Reed's jarringly unfunny cameo, this is easily one of my top ten movies.

May we be spared for ever the Hollywood or - even worse - the BritPack re-make!!

This 1959 (or 1960) film shares the same title as the 1990's comedy about weird northern folk, but is a far more savage satire of decay in the establishment.

A redundant Colonel recruits a unit of marginally more corrupted subordinate Army officers, to stage an American Style heist, based on a US pulp fiction novel. Very few of the characters would initially be associated with the establishment. Their past failings include treason, war-crimes and negligence resulting in deaths.

Jack Hawkins (Colonel Hyde) knits the characters together over the course of the film. By reinventing a form of army discipline the characters appear to rediscover their aplomb.

The actual robbery is almost incidental, occupying ~ 10% of the film.

My real fascination was with the development and interaction of the characters. Even 40 years on their callousness is at times shocking and the 'Blame Ireland' example of scapegoating still resonates, especially in the context of the characters' personal failures in other theatres of the ex-empire.

The film is nearly 2 hours long, but seemed much shorter. Post war film of the City of London (and elsewhere) before 60s redevelopment is a bonus.

Jack Hawkins, excellent as always, heads a superb cast in this marvelously entertaining look at the moral decay of Britain's upper classes in the post-war period. Some of Britain's greatest film talent was at work on this project, including screenwriter Bryan Forbes, director Basil Dearden, and cinematographer Arthur Ibbetson. If you want to see the granddaddy of caper films, this is it. It's also your chance to see Oliver Reed playing a flaming queen: believe it or not!