The Italian Job (1969) Dir. Peter Collinson

Shagadelic baby! Also getting a re-release in August 2024 is The Italian Job for its 55th anniversary. How does this Mini-Cooper crime caper stack up today? Well let’s check it out.

A quick plot cap for the uninitiated. Cockney criminal Charlie Croker (Michael Caine doing his best Michael Caine) is released from prison only to find his friend, and fellow thief, killed by Italian mobsters. However he is encouraged to fulfil the man’s plan to undertake a gold bullion heist over in Italy.

What happens next is Caine pulling a gang together, ensuring the pieces of the puzzle are planned and get the appropriate vehicles ready to get the stolen loot out of the country.

Looking at it now, the film couldn’t be more ‘Swinging Sixties’ if it tried. Almost to the point of cliché. But I for one was completely here for it. Jokes about fashion, mini-skirts, sexpot cads, cravats, tweed and Aston Martins take you back to an era aped by Austin Powers, but (mostly) without the irony.

It’s as English as a cup of tea (of which there are many in this film) with the film’s first half pulling an “Ocean’s Eleven”-style team up to engineer their blueprints before being whisked to beautiful Turin to undertake their dastardly heist. 

The Minis are obviously the centre point but it’s also a car lovers’ dream in general. A Lamborghini Miura (from the excellent opening scene soundtracked by "On Days Like These" by Matt Monro) and an Aston Martin DB4 (suggesting a Bond influence on Charlie’s car kept in storage) are complemented by Jaguar E-Types, a Fiat Dino and of course the film’s iconic Mini Cooper S.

The build up gives us some broad character backgrounds to the loveable rogues and explains the plan all in anticipation of the big heist. It’s also much funnier than I remember with saucy innuendoes and clever wordplay. And although it's VERY MUCH of its time, there’s a bit of guilty fun revelling in its bygone hedonism.

It’s unapologetic patriotic (jingoistic?) with its nods to Rule Britannia, The British Grenadiers and “The Self Preservation Society” but it’s all part of its era-specific charm. Heck, it’s even got Benny Hill in it.

Although as much as most of the film is archaic, the computer hack to disrupt the traffic control centre in Turin seems pretty ahead of its time to me. They’re essentially conducting a DOS attack!

There’s of course the local connection too. The Midlands Job? Most of the chase sequences were filmed in Italy, all except for the shortcut through the sewer. This was filmed in the Sowe Valley Sewer Duplication system near the Stoke Aldermoor district of Coventry. (Bonus fact: the person who closes the gate at the end of the tunnel is director Peter Collinson!)

After the smash and grab raid and the well-filmed and edited car escape I don’t think it’s a spoiler these days to say it finishes on a fantastic “cliffhanger” ending - which itself was  “solved” during a 2009 scientific competition it seems.

Very much influencing modern British crime cinema (especially Snatch & Lock Stock - heck most of Guy Ritchie’s career owes a debt to this film) the film’s legacy is already cemented beyond this latest release. It presents Italian smoothness against rugged English determination, to create a splendid vroom vroom vintage vehicle romp that showcases the bawdy best of sixties Britannia.

★★★★

4 / 5

Michael Sales

The 55th Anniversary 4K Reissue screens on 30th August in cinemas