Robbery | |
---|---|
Directed by | Peter Yates |
Written by | Edward Boyd Peter Yates George Markstein |
Based on | The Robber's Tale by Peta Fordham |
Produced by | Stanley Baker Michael Deeley |
Starring | Stanley Baker Joanna Pettet James Booth |
Cinematography | Douglas Slocombe |
Edited by | Reginald Beck |
Music by | Johnny Keating |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Paramount British Pictures (UK) Embassy Pictures (USA) |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 114 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Budget | £395,338 [1] |
Robbery is a 1967 British crime film directed by Peter Yates and starring Stanley Baker, Joanna Pettet and James Booth. [2] The story is a heavily fictionalised version of the 1963 Great Train Robbery. The film was produced by Stanley Baker and Michael Deeley, for Baker's company Oakhurst Productions.
A criminal gang uses a gas canister to knock out the occupant of a car and then bundles him into a stolen ambulance. There, the gang cuts free a briefcase full of jewellery. Shortly afterward, while the criminals change vehicles, they are spotted by the police. A high-speed chase develops, and the criminals get away.
Using the money from this job, crime boss Paul Clifton builds up a team to hit a Royal Mail train coming south from Glasgow. A meticulous plan is put in place, but there are obstacles: Jack, the driver of the getaway car in the jewellery theft, is identified in an identity parade and arrested but refuses to name accomplices to police; gang member Robinson must be broken out of prison; and Inspector George Langdon is hot on the trail of the jewel robbers and finds out through informers about plans for an even bigger heist.
The gang gathers to do the job and change the signals to stop the train and escape with the cash. In the morning, Langdon and the police investigate the crime scene and explore possible local hideouts, including a disused airbase in which the robbers are hiding in the basement, but are not found.
The cash is divided up and the getaway vehicles hidden at a scrapyard. The members wait in turn to take their share to Switzerland. However, the paid-off scrapyard man is arrested at an airport, is found with banknotes from the raid, and confesses. Police then arrest some of gang as they retrieve cars at the scrapyard. That leads the police back to the airfield, where they arrest further gang members.
Clifton evades capture, places his cut of the money on a private plane, and is last seen disembarking at New York with a different identity.
Michael Deeley bought the rights to Peta Fordham's book [3] based on the 'Great Train Robbery' of 1963. He and director Peter Yates offered the project to Woodfall Film Productions, where Deeley worked, but the company did not want to make it. Deeley and Yates then approached Stanley Baker to star in the film. Baker had a good relationship with Joseph E. Levine, whose Embassy Pictures agreed to fund the movie. [4] Finance also came from the NFFC. [1]
To avoid legal problems, it was decided to write a script in which the details in the 25-minute robbery sequence were taken entirely from court evidence, but the remainder of the film would be fictitious speculation. "We had to make sure there was no risk of accidental identification with anyone", said Baker. "The characters involved in the film are in no way based on the characters who took part in the great train robbery". [5]
Vanessa Redgrave was approached to play Stanley Baker's wife but turned down the role. [6] Joseph Levine requested for the story to be changed to include an American mastermind behind the robbery to ensure that the movie would appeal to American audiences. Three days of scenes were shot featuring Jason Robards in his role on Long Island and using Levine's own yacht. [7] [8] However, after this was done it was decided not to use the footage.
George Raft was to have played a role in the film but was unable to do so after he was refused entry into London. [9]
The movie was shot entirely on location in early 1967 and contains much period footage of central London, including shots of Marble Arch, Trafalgar Square, Little Venice and Kensal Green. Shots of the gang meeting up prior to the robbery were filmed at Leyton Orient Football Club during a match with Swindon Town. The gang's airfield hideout was filmed at RAF Graveley. Filming occurred even at New York Harbor and Arbour Hill Prison in Dublin. The robbery itself was shot to the east of Theddingworth. [10]
According to Michael Deeley the film did "good business" on release. [11] It was not a big hit in the US; Peter Yates called it "very poorly exploited". [12]
The critical response to Robbery over the years was summarized by Peter Elliott in 2014: "Robbery was praised by a number of critics upon its release.... However, time and culture have not been kind to Yates' film, and it has, to a very large extent, been relegated to a footnote in British crime cinema". [13] Beyond critical opinion, the location-shot car chase at the beginning of the film has been very influential. It was seen by Steve McQueen and led him and producer Philip D'Antoni to approve Yates as the director of Bullitt (1968). [14] The car chase in Bullitt has been called "revolutionary" and "one of the most exciting car chases in film history". [15]
Variety called the film "a cleverly-spun suspense story with authentic British locale shooting" and added that "the screenplay [...] deliberately puzzles the action and gives inventive and unexpected twists to the plot which add to the overall suspense. Dialog is minimal and used only when absolutely necessary". [16]
Boxoffice reviewed the film as "crisply photographed, immaculately edited and technically absorbing." [17]
Leslie Halliwell said: "Heavy-going fictionalised account of the famous train robbery of 1963; best seen as standard cops and robbers, with some good chase sequences". [18]
The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 3/5 stars: "Following the Great Train Robbery of 1963, several film projects were announced, but this is the only British production to have got off the ground. It never fulfils the promise of its opening car chase, during which one vehicle mows down a policeman and a procession of schoolchildren. Thereafter, the plotting and execution of the robbery seems rather trite, and the fictitious characters are not half as colourful as the real-life Ronnie Biggs and company. But there is more action towards the end, enough to impress Hollywood, who summoned Peter Yates to direct Bullitt". [19]
The film won the best original British screenplay award (for Edward Boyd, Peter Yates, and George Markstein) from the Writers Guild of Great Britain.
Robbery was released on DVD for the first time in 2008. Before this, the only copies in circulation had been from a VHS release in the 1980s.
In August 2015, a remastered version was released on Kino Lorber Blu-ray and DVD, scanned at 2K and fully restored to its original aspect ratio, along with some special features.
The Great Train Robbery was the robbery of £2.61 million from a Royal Mail train travelling from Glasgow to London on the West Coast Main Line in the early hours of 8 August 1963 at Bridego Railway Bridge, Ledburn, near Mentmore in Buckinghamshire, England.
Bank robbery is the criminal act of stealing from a bank, specifically while bank employees and customers are subjected to force, violence, or a threat of violence. This refers to robbery of a bank branch or teller, as opposed to other bank-owned property, such as a train, armored car, or (historically) stagecoach. It is a federal crime in the United States.
Since the invention of locomotives in the early 19th century, trains have often been the target of robbery, in which the goal is to steal money or other valuables. Train robbery was especially common during the 19th century and is commonly associated with gangs of outlaws in the American Old West. It has continued into the 21st century, with criminals usually targeting freight trains carrying commercial cargo, or targeting passengers of public transportation for their valuables.
Bullitt is a 1968 American action thriller film directed by Peter Yates and produced by Philip D'Antoni. The picture stars Steve McQueen as the title character, San Francisco police detective Frank Bullitt, who pursues a group of mobsters after they kill the witness he's been assigned to protect. The cast also features Robert Vaughn, Jacqueline Bisset, Don Gordon, Robert Duvall, Simon Oakland and Norman Fell. The screenplay by Alan R. Trustman and Harry Kleiner was based on the 1963 novel Mute Witness by Robert L. Fish, under the pseudonym Robert L. Pike. The film was made by McQueen's Solar Productions company, with his partner Robert Relyea as executive producer. Lalo Schifrin wrote the original jazz-inspired score.
Buster is a 1988 British romantic crime comedy-drama based on events from the Great Train Robbery, starring Phil Collins and Julie Walters.
Joanna Pettet is a British-born Canadian retired actress.
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is a 1974 American crime comedy film written and directed by Michael Cimino and starring Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges, George Kennedy and Geoffrey Lewis.
The Great St. Trinian's Train Robbery is a British comedy film, directed by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, written by Sidney and Leslie Gilliat, and released on 4 April 1966. It is the last of the original series of films based on the St Trinian's School set of images and comics, and the only one to be produced in colour. The film stars a selection of actors from previous films in the series, including George Cole, Richard Wattis, Eric Barker, Michael Ripper, and Raymond Huntley, alongside Frankie Howerd, Reg Varney, Dora Bryan, and the voice of Stratford Johns.
The Wrong Arm of the Law is a 1963 British comedy film directed by Cliff Owen and starring Peter Sellers, Bernard Cribbins, Lionel Jeffries, John Le Mesurier and Bill Kerr. It was written by John Antrobus, John Warren, Len Heath, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, and made by Romulus Films.
Peter James Yates was an English film director and producer, known for his versatility and “attention to detail” across a variety of genres. He received nominations for four Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards.
Hell Is a City is a 1960 British crime thriller film starring Stanley Baker, based on the 1954 novel of the same title by Maurice Procter.
William Hickman was an American professional stunt driver, stunt coordinator and actor in the U.S. film industry. His film career spanned from the 1950s through to the late 1970s, and included films such as Bullitt, The French Connection and The Seven-Ups.
The Fleagle Gang was a group of early 20th century American bank robbers and murderers. They were found and executed or killed after robbing the First National Bank in Lamar, Colorado. Their cases were the first in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) used a single fingerprint as part of the evidence leading to a conviction. They were also suspected to have committed a series of previous bank robberies over a 10-year period.
A crime scene getaway is the act of departing from the location where one has committed a crime. It is an act that the offender(s) may or may not have planned in detail, resulting in a variety of outcomes. A crime scene is the "location of a crime; especially one at which forensic evidence is collected in a controlled manner." The "getaway" is any escape by a perpetrator from that scene, which may have been witnessed by eyewitnesses or law enforcement.
Wild Rebels is a 1967 film directed by William Grefe and starring Steve Alaimo as Rod Tillman, a stock car driver who goes undercover as the wheelman for a motorcycle gang. The tagline for the film was "They live for kicks... love for kicks... kill for kicks".
Dancing with Crime is a 1947 British film noir film directed by John Paddy Carstairs, starring Richard Attenborough, Barry K. Barnes and Sheila Sim. A man hunts down the killer of his lifelong friend.
Michael Joseph Reynolds was a member of the Garda Síochána, who was posthumously awarded the Scott Medal for bravery after being fatally wounded in pursuit of bank robbers operating on behalf of the Official IRA.
Offbeat is a 1961 black-and-white British second feature ('B') crime film directed by Cliff Owen and starring William Sylvester, Mai Zetterling, John Meillon and Anthony Dawson. The screenplay was by Peter Barnes.
Frank P. Keller was an American film and television editor with 24 feature film credits from 1958 - 1977. He is noted for the series of films he edited with director Peter Yates, for his four nominations for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing ("Oscars"), and for the "revolutionary" car chase sequence in the film Bullitt (1968) that likely won him the editing Oscar.
Birds of Prey is a 1973 television film directed by William A. Graham and starring David Janssen, Ralph Meeker, and Elayne Heilveil. The screenplay was written by Robert Boris from a story by Boris and Rupert Hitzig. It is a crime action film depicting a radio station helicopter traffic reporter who, witnessing an armored car robbery, engages in a chase when the suspects flee in a vehicle and then switch to their own get-away helicopter.
Notes
Yates made Robbery (1967) a year before he shot Bullitt. It's a no-brainer why Steve McQueen wanted him as his director. Far from just a test run, Robbery's opening chase scene through London set the stage for the action/crime thrillers The French Connection and The Seven-Ups in the '70s.
Bullitt contains one of the most exciting car chases in film history, a sequence that revolutionized Hollywood's standards.
Bibliography