Audrey Hepburn plays the daughter of an art forger who hires Peter O’Toole to steal her father’s fake Cellini Venus in this heist caper set in the Paris art world.
It’s overlong and overwritten, and shows its age in the Swinging Sixties decor and the generally rather frantic mood: it’s What’s New, Pussycat? (1965) meets Rififi(1955) with more than a hint of Topkapi(1964).
But there are compensations in the supporting cast: Hugh Griffith – who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Wyler’s Ben-Hur(1959) – as Hepburn’s father, and Charles Boyer, Marcel Dalio and Moustache evoking the sophistication of those 1930s comedies of Ernst Lubitsch.
American vulgarity, meanwhile, is supplied by greedy art collector Eli Wallach, the replacement for George C Scott, whom Wyler fired after only one day of shooting.
How To Steal A Million reunited Hepburn with her Roman Holiday(1953) director William Wyler for the third and final time.
Nicole Bonnet
Audrey Hepburn Simon Dermott
Peter O’Toole Davis Leland
Eli Wallach Charles Bonnet
Hugh Griffith De Solnay
Charles Boyer Grammont
Fernand Gravet Senor Paravideo
Marcel Dalio Chief guard
Jacques Marin Guard
Moustache
Director
William Wyler
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It’s overlong and overwritten, and shows its age in the Swinging Sixties decor and the generally rather frantic mood: it’s What’s New, Pussycat? (1965) meets Rififi (1955) with more than a hint of Topkapi (1964).
