Wick's Review

Summary - Great 4.0

How to Steal a Million could just as easily be titled How to Steal a Movielover’s Heart. Audrey Hepburn & Peter O’Toole in their primes, Paris as if in a stylish fantasy, lots of well-earned laughs: it’s a sure thing.

Wiliam Wyler famously directed Princess Audrey in Roman Holiday some 13 years earlier. That smashing debut announced to the world that new movie royalty was on the scene. Wyler’s How to Steal a Million subsequently caught her in her early mature phase, completely worldly, yet still meltingly beautiful.

Highlights Abound

• Audrey reads Hitchcock … in French.
• Audrey’s little car and cute white bonnet
• O’Toole’s blue eyes appear over a painting, peeking
• Jaguar E-Type, of course: The most beautiful car in the world
• Very sexy when she lovingly cleans the picture frame. Stroking and kissing it.
• Women who want to know how to dress should model the Givenchy clothes on Audrey: e.g., the bright yellow skirt suit with white belt, white stockings and shoes.
• Consider also her black stockings, black lace dress and black lace mask at the Hotel Ritz.
• Her rectangular white shades alone are enough to start a fashion stampede.
• Charles de Gaulle was the larger than life President of France in 1968, an offscreen figure of gravitas in the movie.
• “Paa-Paa!” exclaims Audrey every time she gets exasperated with her father, the criminal.

Super Sexy

“I suppose you want to kiss me goodnight.” “Normally I wouldn’t, but you’ve been such a good sport.”

Now that’s the way to tee-up a first kiss, an hour and a half into an entirely lovable movie.

Acting - Really Great 4.5

Audrey Hepburn dazzles to this day, able to be equally glamorous and self-deprecating, silly and sincere. Nobody has ever done it better.

Peter O’Toole is more a workaday leading man in How to Steal a Million, which is to say he’s not nearly as distinctive as his leading lady is.

• Hugh Griffith fussily plays Audrey’s art forger of a father.
• Eli Wallach (the young Eli Wallach) plays an American mogul.
• Charles Boyer played supercilious as well as it could be done.
• Moustache (yes, that was his stage name) plays a Guard, instantly recognizable by his … mustache.

Film - Really Great 4.5

This is a well structured film. To wit, they need to steal a million dollars right after they establish they can. Another: I like how she took a last look around the closet where she fell in love.

Edge - Risqué 1.7

Sophisticated salaciousness

Reality - Glib 1.7

Poppycock with big magnet and keys

Priests walking everywhere. No priests walking in Paris today.

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