How to Steal a Million (1966)

This movie could have been more fun that it is, but I still liked it - Audrey Hepburn, swathed in the height of chic as usual, tries to save her art forger father (the incomparable Hugh Griffith) from exposure as a fake, by stealing a statue of Venus carved by her grandfather for an art exhibition. To help her in this she enlists the help of a society burglar (the young and impossibly blue-eyed Peter O'Toole) and in the course of all this, they fall in love.

It's predictable but enjoyable to watch (and it helps that the two stars are extremely easy on the eye), but with few surprises and some slow moments, it isn't up to William Wyler's better efforts. Really just a one-dimensional story of the 1960s beautiful people, like so many other movies of its time.

Fmovies: Peter O'Toole shows Audrey Hepburn "How to Steal a Million" in this 1966 caper film directed by William Wyler. The film also stars Eli Wallach, Hugh Griffith, Charles Boyer, and Fernand Gravey. Hepburn plays Nicole, the daughter of a renowned art collector, Bonnet (Griffith), who in fact is not a collector but an expert forger. He has lent his famous Cellini Venus to the Paris Art Museum, only to find out that before it can be insured, there will be a technical test to assure its authenticity. Since it's a sculpture, and the chemical makeup was different from the material in the 14th century, the forgery will be easy to detect.

In order to help her father, Nicole Bonnet contacts Simon Dermott {O'Toole) whom she caught when he broke into the house she shares with her father, and asks him to steal the Venus from the museum.

In the '60s, caper films were all the rage, and it would be hard to miss with two such beautiful and sophisticated stars as Hepburn and O'Toole. Their chemistry is great, the caper is clever, and the dialogue is witty. The supporting cast is excellent; someone said Eli Wallach was miscast as an obsessive collector. Originally Wyler cast George G. Scott, but he was replaced when he arrived on the set late. Scott would have been more tycoon-like.

Like bubbly champagne, "How to Steal a Million" tickles and delights throughout.

Highly recommended.

This film is a superb mix of farce, comedy, suspense and charm.

About he last one, lots of charm, arranged by Givenchy gowns and Audrey Hepburn herself. With good romantic and ironic dialogs and also surprisingly very good comedian Peter O'Toole all the time. All the time he pretends a serious role, but he is the highest responsible for the farce and the comedy, since the shot she hit him. Together with Hugh Griffith, these three hold the film giving to spectator the best of his time. >From the overture to the end, this film is an unique piece of good taste and the smoked love story is subtly conducted by William Wyler in the way of The Big Country - what proved that a nice love story can be told without the hot appeal of modern movies.

How to Steal a Million fmovies. William Wyler crafts a delightfully frothy caper backed up by wonderful on screen chemistry between Peter O'Toole & Audrey Hepburn. It seems to me that Hepburn always managed to bond with her Male co-stars, and here the interplay between O'Toole and herself is wonderful. Check out a long sequence of events involving the pair hiding out in a closet, it's gold dusted cinema. The films central plot involves Hepburn & O'Toole planning a daring robbery from a Paris museum to keep her art forger Father {a delightful Hugh Griffith} out of trouble, at first the couple are purely business partners with no love lost for each other, but as the story plays out the pair are forced to get along and etc. The burglary itself is dramatic, attention grabbing entertainment, and it's also the film's highest point, but overall the film as a whole is simply good romantic fun. While it also features a very tidy shift for its finale to further reward the audience for their time spent with the movie. Throw in dapper turns from Charles Boyer & Eli Wallach too, and it's all good really. Open the wine, sit back and relax with Pete & Audrey. 8/10

Somehow Audrey Hepburn made fluffy romantic caper movies look

like high art. Take this adorable trifle directed by William Wyler

with Audrey looking glorious in her trademark Givenchy clothing.

Audrey could have phone in a performance, but she's totally

enchanting as always, making us overlook the seams in the script.

She's beautifully supported by Peter O'Toole, who never looked

handsomer or more Cary Grant-ish in his life as Simon, the art

expert who gets talked into stealing Audrey's father's statue of the

Cellini Venus back from the museum when it is learned the statue

has to be authenticated for insurance purposes.

Hugh Griffith, as Audrey's father, is a delightful rogue of an art

forger and Charles Boyer and Eli Wallach just add to the fun. The

actual theft of the statue is quite ingenious, if a little too drawn out.

Still, here's two hours of pure enchantment. That Ferrari still looks

good nearly forty years later, and if Audrey was walking down Fifth

Avenue, dressed in Givenchy's stunning creations today, she'd

cause a riot. Check out that lace cocktail dress with the matching

lace mask at the bar of the Ritz in Paris! It doesn't get any chicer

than this.

What makes a movie like this so wonderful? It's probably just an age thing (I remember seeing this movie at the cinema), but when I saw it again recently I just felt a sense of joy and pleasure and, yes, optimism. Now these are words that may be almost incomprehensible to today's jaded, cynical and, often, brutalised audiences, and I am sure that many would see this movie as slow, naive and totally irrelevant.

But for me the effortless playing, the perfect timing and understated sophistication is so much more intelligent, witty and rewarding than the clunking, crude sign-posted so called "rom-coms" of today.

This is not their best film by any means, but to watch O'Toole and Hepburn playing off each other with such natural and fluent grace is simply magical. Lighthearted fluff like this completely works when the actors really know what they are doing.

And has there ever been anybody who is simultaneously so sophisticated and vulnerable as Audrey Hepburn? There is a scene where she is wearing a chaste little nightdress and she put on a pair of ordinary street galoshes. As she clumps across the room she displays more sex appeal and sheer class than any of today's moussed up, made up, blown up actresses could ever comprehend.