The Caine Mutiny: In Celebration of the Final Scene of "The Italian Job"
06 September 2005
Hurrah, for "The Italian Job." Hip, Hip... well, you know the rest.
I am not, of course, referring to that sniveling, seething, whimpering little attempt at a remake two years ago. I am referring, as loyal readers will have no doubt by now surmised, to the genuine article: "The Italian Job," Michael Caine, 1969.
While I could applaud it for the pure energy it creates, for its many memorable lines, or as a staple of sixties British cinema, I am cheering it today for its ending: an ending that would never fly now.
At the risk of spoiling the original "Italian Job" for many, as (a) all too few people have seen the original and (b) the remake diverged dramatically from it (a fact I will commend the new one for, though there is not much else to commend), I will describe the last moment of the film... and a fine moment it is.
Successful in the heist of the century, gentleman con man Charlie Crocker (Caine) and his band of miscreant thieves and specialists celebrate aboard a private bus that careens around the narrow mountain roads of the Alps as the crew travels from Turin into Switzerland to deposit their shining stack of gold into a Swiss bank. The driver of said bus is part of the heist and is, of course, celebrating, too, which causes him to nearly miss a sharp turn, and the bus is thrown over a cliff’s edge, teetering perilously close to certain doom for our heros.
In this literal state of suspense – this literal cliffhanger – the crew of thieves shuffle cautiously backward toward the side of the bus lodged on the cliff face. Is this enough? Of course not: the gold, at the suspended end of the bus, is itself causing the bus to teeter. Somehow, our heroes must get it back or risk losing their fortune, and drastically less important, it seems, their lives.
Crocker cautiously gets on his belly and crawls slowly, excruciatingly forward, toward the gold. We watch from the safe side, like a member of the miscreant band, as he gets within arms reach. Then we cut to the reverse, to the back doors, where the gold slides further away, thanks to a more radical tip of the bus with Crocker’s added weight.
The drama continues in this vein – Crocker within an arm’s reach, the gold sliding almost out the bus’ back doors – until, from the point of view of one of the band of thieves, he turns his head towards us and says, "Hang on lads. I’ve got a great idea." Dissolve to a long shot of the bus teetering on the cliff’s edge. Cue the film’s iconic musical theme – "Self Preservation Society" – as we crane away. Credits. Fin.
What a moment of pure animated suspense. What a scene of perilous defiance. Like a choose-your-own-adventure book, the audience is left with only its opinion of the characters to decide what is their inevitable fate. Do they crash and lose their gold and their lives? Do they, somehow, get out to safely? Do they live and lose the gold, a case in which they are sure to die anyway, since criminal mastermind Mr. Bridger (Noel Coward), whom made the heist possible, would surely use his connections to rid the lot of them.
It is a pretty well established fact that this moment was not the film’s intended ending. Some sources say no end was scripted by the time shooting began, and eventually, the second unit was given the task of completing the film. On the other hand, Michael Caine, in a 2003 BBC interview to celebrate his 70th birthday, did actually describe what his character’s great idea was, which suggests there was one. In any case, the scene the filmmakers came up with – the above scene – was favored by Paramount for one very desirable reason: it left space for a sequel. (Unrealized at the time, the sequel may well be the 2003 "Italian Job" with Mark Wahlberg as Crocker. That film goes beyond the original film’s script to make all the characters save one suddenly American, and, more to the point, to create a double cross after the Italian heist. Coincidentally, the 2003 movie will have a sequel: the uninspiringly titled "The Brazilian Job," to be released in 2006).
If screenwriter Troy Kennedy-Martin did write an ending he surely would not have been surprised it was changed by the time his film was in production: among the many changes made were an entirely ad libed scene in a garage as Crocker steals an Aston Martin, and, more consciously on the part of the director, alterations in character types thanks to the hiring of comedic actors like Coward and the impregnable Benny Hill.
But what the film achieves in that final moment is a great element of unrefined absence – bordering on true artistic disappointment, the Russian Formalists’ notion of estrangement – at the moment we cut away from the scene inside the bus. It is unexpected, and it makes the ending absolutely perfect.
This is an action movie, after all, and be it now or in 1969, what we have come to expect from action movies is what a mentor of mine dubbed, "the male melodrama": clear heroes, even more clearly defined antagonists, and a clear triumph over villainy. "The Italian Job" has that: the heist is a success. But in that moment on the hillside it adds the unexpected: the even more emotionally demanding possibility of the bird-in-hand disaster. With hard stuff out of the way, the movie surprises us with the loss of the money, the very thing we have strived with our heroes to attain. How could they be so careless? How could they be so dumb? Bridger will surely have their bits off now. A perfect disaster in every sense.
So where else to end, but... Hurrah.
*puts "The Italian Job" o the Netflix queue*