Ever since the news broke about the astounding jewel heist
at the Louvre, I’ve had one big thought: what a great movie this could make! Of
course, I’m also deeply sorry that the Napoleonic-era crown jewels on display
in the Louvre’s galleries have been carried off by nefarious means. As a
museum-lover myself, I don’t like shaking my head sadly over empty cases.
Still, I’m a longtime fan of heist movies, and so I’ve got to admire the
cleverness of the meticulous thieves who, in broad daylight entered the Louvre
through an upper-story window and—in a mere seven minutes—made off with unspeakably
fabulous gems.
To be honest, I’ve enjoyed a lot of movies that center on
the theft of jewels or precious minerals. The nature of the genre is such that
we’re often rooting for the success of the thieves, though the films frequently
end with a suspect in custody. Examples include The Italian Job, The
Pink Panther (a series that started with the theft of an unusual pink
diamond), and even—for a family audience—Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance
Most Fowl, in which an penguin who’s a ruthless diamond thief is pursued by
our favorite man-&-dog duo. But I want to focus here on two outstanding
crime caper films that take place in museums.
Topkapi, a 1964 caper movie, is very much on the side
of the bad guys, It seems there’s a
certain jewel-encrusted dagger, once the prize possession of Sultan Mahmud I, on display in
Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace. Elaborate security measures are in place, but the
presence of the dagger proves irresistible to an international jewel thief
(Melina Mercouri), who recruits a former lover
(Maximilian Schell) to plan a brilliant heist. The two assemble a team
with a wide range of skills: one is a muscleman, one an aerialist, one a slob who
can be counted on to follow orders without thinking too clearly. (Peter Ustinov
won an Oscar for this hilarious role.) Everything goes as planned, until – uh
oh! By the by, Topkapi is directed by Jules Dassin, Mercouri’s husband.
He’s also the director of a classic French jewel heist flick, Rififi, in
which the audience is rendered breathless during a half-hour-long safecracking
scene conducted in total silence.).
Perhaps my very favorite film in this genre is How to
Steal a Million¸ from 1966. This spritely caper comedy, directed by the
great William Wyler, pairs Audrey Hepburn with Peter O’Toole as two unlikely
folks who unite to steal a priceless antique statuette, known as the Cellini
Venus, that’s newly on display in a Paris museum. The twist is that the statue
is not an antique at all. It’s a clever forgery, and Hepburn desperately needs
to get it back to save her father from disgrace (and probably prison). What
makes the film lovable is the budding relationship between Hepburn’s concerned
daughter and O’Toole’s “thief” who turns out to be not at all what he seems. If
you’re a romantic who adores heist films with sunny endings, this is the movie
for you.
Right now we don’t know who stole the Napoleonic treasures
or where they’ll end up. In their current form (as diadems, etc.), they’re
probably too well known to be fenced, but of course they can be disassembled
and the parts sold for very big bucks. It’s disheartening to know that art
thieves sometimes manage to keep well-known works for decades. Consider
Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which in 1990 was robbed of 13 works
of art, including a Rembrandt and one of the world’s 34 Vermeers. No one has
seen them since.
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