The Case of the Caper Capper

Two crime-caper movies that really stick in my mind, and which I never tire of watching on late-night television, turn out to be linked. The first of these is Brian G. Hutton’s antiwar film, Kelly’s Heroes (1970), on which a young John Landis worked as an assistant director (second unit). I recall the movie’s plot as a kind of antidote to the gung-ho antics of The Dirty Dozen (1967). My second favorite flick to mention is Peter Collinson’s The Italian Job (the 1969 original, not the 2003 remake), which featured a memorable early performance by Michael Caine. So, how are these films connected? Not only did they both posit a gang of misfits trying to make off with a sizable fortune in European gold bullion, but they were both penned by British screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin.

Recently, the National Film Theatre (NFT) in London celebrated the career of this brilliant and influential screenwriter with a special season showcasing his work on the south bank of the Thames River.

The UK Independent on Friday contained a fascinating article about Kennedy Martin, in which writer James Brown tackled the most interesting aspect of The Italian Job: its ending. Reports Brown:

It is one of the most famous film endings ever made. A coach teeters over an Alpine precipice. Inside, Michael Caine attempts to retrieve $4m of gold bullion that he and his gang have just stolen from a high-security van in Turin, threatening to topple the vehicle over the edge in the process. As the gold slips out of his reach he turns to his gang who are providing the counter-weight and says: “Hang on a minute, lads. I’ve got a great idea.”

As the camera pulls away at the end of The Italian Job, the viewer is left wondering what the idea is and whether or not the gang will get out alive and save the booty.

But it has emerged that Troy Kennedy Martin, the writer of the 1969 film, and Peter Collinson, its director, planned a very different ending. The conclusion that ended up on screen was bolted on by the legendary Paramount studio boss Robert Evans to replace the original ending.

How was the film supposed to end, asks The Independent?

For fans of The Italian Job, “what happened next” is a major topic of discussion. Caine has his own theory: the gang get out of the coach safely before trekking to the bottom of the cliff where they retrieve the gold, only to find themselves surrounded by Mafia hitmen with machine guns, who take the bullion back to Turin.

Kennedy Martin, who had envisaged a much darker film, resigned himself to matters being taken out of his hands when the producer cast Noël Coward and Benny Hill. “Once they had managed that and I saw which way the film was going I just let them get on with it,” he said.

So what ending did Kennedy Martin originally envisage? “Charlie and the boys escaped from Italy and deposited the bullion in a Swiss account with each one of them privately memorising part of the box number to stop any one of them going back and helping themselves. As they emerge from the bank the Mafia are there and kill two of them, making it impossible for them to ever release the gold. But even then Charlie has an idea. He says, ‘We’ll just have to go back day after day and add a new number each time until we get it right’.”

Writer Brown goes on to point out significant changes made in other modern films, such as True Romance (1993) and that intellectual and existential comedy Dumb and Dumber (1994).

Download Troy Kennedy Martin’s résumé from the NFT site, just to learn more about why he’s such an important screenwriter. Then go out and rent DVD copies of The Italian Job and Kelly’s Heroes, order in a large Italian pizza to go with some ice-cold German beer, and relax with your own mini film-festival featuring two of the best caper movies ever made.

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Speaking of film picks, blogger Vince Keenan notes that “Volume One of Fox’s Michael Shayne, Private Detective collection will be out on March 20. The two DVD set contains four 1940-41 films starring Lloyd Nolan as the gumshoe created by Brett Halliday, as well as plenty of extras: a history of the character, a feature on the work of paperback cover artist extraordinaire Robert McGinnis, and more.”