ViewGuide

Created May 28, 2016 05:51PM PST • Edited Apr 03, 2021 04:18PM PST

1. Quality

2. 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.

4. 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.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. 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.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

    Directed and Produced by the legendary William Wyler

12. Play Great 4.0

    Screenplay by Harry Kunitz, based on Venus Rising, a 1962 story in Practise to Deceive by George Bradshaw

13. Music Really Great 4.5

    Suspense point: music starts a quiver, then a vibrato…

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    • Givenchy designed timeless outfits and accessories for Audrey Hepburn.
    • Purple stairway
    • Audrey’s ornate bedroom suite.
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.7

    Sophisticated salaciousness

17. Sex Titillating 1.9

18. Violence Fierce 1.7

19. Rudeness Salty 1.6

21. Reality

    Glib 1.7

    Poppycock with big magnet and keys

    Priests walking everywhere. No priests walking in Paris today.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.1

23. Biological Glib 1.5

24. Physical Glib 1.6