Cinema: How to Lift a Bust

Gambit. A perfect crime is like a soup-can skyscraper in a supermarket. Its smug symmetry, the hubris of it all, inspires the naughty little boy in everybody with a devilish desire to give the arrogant thing a nudge and bring it down in a thundering great heap. In Gambit, the naughty little boy in everybody should have the time of his life.

The perfect crime in this picture is described twice. First time around, the criminal (Michael Caine) confidently imagines how it will happen. A cocksure young cockney, Caine likes to picture himself as a consummate cracksman and his accomplice (Shirley MacLaine) as a dumb Dora who knows just enough to keep her mouth shut. The pair arrives in the Middle East, where Caine smoothly contrives to encounter a gullible Moslem millionaire (Herbert Lom). Flabbergasted by the girl’s resemblance to his late beloved wife, the millionaire instantly invites both Caine and MacLaine to dine in his private apartments, and after dinner is absurdly pleased to toddle off with Shirley on a tour of the Arab quarter. With the coast clear, Caine simply ducks back into the millionaire’s flat and steals the priceless bust of a Ming empress.

Second time around, the crime is shown as it actually happens. Everything goes hilariously wrong. Caine turns out to be a stone-fingered amateur, his accomplice a witty little chit who can’t keep her mouth shut, the millionaire himself an alarmingly shrewd article who instantly suspects that Caine & Co. are up to no good. Even so, he invites the crooks to his apartment for the pure pleasure of watching their faces when they see that the bust of the empress is secluded in an impenetrable electronic seraglio.

The abduction from the seraglio is the prettiest piece of acrobatic larceny since the heist scene in Topkapi, and in the last reel Director Ronald Neame (The Horse’s Mouth) contrives five trick endings in rapid succession that finish the film with a rousing funfare.