Le casse

I was looking through TubiTV's list of on-demand movies that are about to leave the platform at the end of the month, and one that I saw that looked interesting was The Burglars. So, I made a point of watching it now while I still could, and moving up the post on it so that the rest of you could have the chance to watch it too if you want.

The movie opens up with some lovely shots of Athens, and somebody doing surveillance on something, but exactly who and what aren't so important to the rest of the movie. After the credits, the movie switches to nighttime Athens, and a 1970-vintage nondescript European sedan of the sort that looks like a wonder it was able to stay together. The driver and his three passengers drive off to some place that's in one of the leafy, well-to-do suburban districts. Since the movie is called The Burglars, you know that there's going to be some burgling, so....

Two of the passengers: Ralph (Robert Hossein) and Renzi (Renato Salvatori) get out of the car and ring the doorbell, waylaying the man who opens the door. They then make their way to a safe located inside the house, and proceed to set about using sophisticated (for 1970, at least) electronics to crack the safe and remove a case full of emeralds, which is supposedly valued at $1 million. Meanwhile, the driver, Azad (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and the female passenger, Hélène (Nicole Calfan) remain outside as guards and to send signals if it's OK to proceed with the robbery.

They get the emeralds and all live happily ever after. Yeah, right. This is a heist movie, so you know that something is going to go wrong with the heist. Or, in this case, two things. The first is that a police car shows up in the neighborhood. Since the crap car parked outside the house is severely out of place, our cop, Abel Zacharia (Omar Sharif), has good reason to suspect that something might be wrong. He gets out and questions Azad, but eventually leaves. The bigger problem comes the next day. Ralph's plan had been to pay big bucks to the captain of a freight ship to ferry the four thieves out of the country, so the four make their way to the port of Pireaus in order to get on that boat and board it. However, when the ship reached port, the captain knew that he was going to have to put in for some unscheduled repairs to make the ship seaworthy again.

Even worse is that Zacharia shows up at the port, watching the burglars from a safe distance, before getting in a car chase with Azad. At this point, Zacharia knows there's something more going on, so he decides to use the lovely model Lena (Dyan Cannon) to get at Azad. Azad is trying to stay clear of the cops so that he can eventually get back to Hélène, who is biding her time at a resort on one of the Greek islands. Zacharia is trying to get proof that these people really did commit the crime, but there's also more going on with Zacharia and his unorthodox methods than he's letting on....

I was wondering as I was watching The Burglars how much of the movie was dubbed in post-production. What I didn't realize until looking up the movie afterwords is that, as with Hollywood in the early days of talking pictures, there were actually two versions of the movie made, one in English and one in French. It's also based on a novel from the early 1950s that Hollywood had already filmed in the late 50s, also titled The Burglars and starring Dan Duryea and Jayne Mansfield. I haven't seen that version; I don't know if it's available anywhere.

As for this version of The Burglars, at least it's lovely to look at. Athens, even in the off-season, is beautiful, with the Greek islands (IMDb says Corfu was used for the island resort) being even more beautiful. It's just a shame that the plot couldn't have been executed better. The opening heist and the car chase each go on much too long, while we're not really given enough context to make the characters' motivations (especially Zacharia) comprehensible. In the end, The Burglars is a passable exemplar of the glossy heist films of the 1960s and 1970s, and OK enough to pass the time with. But it feels like there could have been so much more here.

If you go to Tubi's website for the week and a half or so that the movie is still available and do a search, you can find it and watch for yourself. I didn't include a direct link mostly because it's presumably going to go dead soon.