The Italian Job on PAL Laserdisc

• Cat.no: PLFEB 35241
• Cert: PG
• Running time: 96 minutes
• Sides: 2 (CLV)
• Year: 1969
• Pressing: UK, 1996
• Chaptered: YES
• Sound: Mono
• Widescreen: 2.35:1
• Price: £19.99
  

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  Director:

  Peter Collinson

  Starring:

  Michael Caine
  Noel Coward
  Benny Hill

Nearly thirty years old and still one of the best caper movies ever made. Michael Caine features as a criminal just out of prison who becomes the recipient of a brilliant plan to burgle a bullion shipment from Turin when the Mafia arrange for the plan’s mastermind Roger to have a very nasty accident.

Pretty much the tale of that plan’s execution, the film is brilliantly scripted by Troy Kennedy Martin (Z-Cars, Edge Of Darkness) so as to include such memorable characterisations as genteel criminal mastermind Mr. Bridger (Coward) and a computer scientist fixated on fat women (Hill). He also writes the piece as unashamed British patriotism – why else have a daring escape in the final reel employing three Minis in Red, White and Blue?

Minor elements may have dated – the swinging sixties background, the attitude to women as little more than sex objects, the computers that look like yesteryear’s reel-to-reel tape recorders, the mono soundtrack – but as a piece of entertainment, it remains as enthralling as ever. Every so often a car is crashed or crunched up or pushed off a mountain roadside by a bulldozer to maintain viewer interest in between Minis practising driving up ramps and an explosion where a van is destroyed while its doors are left intact.

More importantly, there’s the truly incredible finale where the three minis carrying the loot race through Turin shopping precincts, along crowded pavements, on to the canopy of a stadium, leap over rooftops and race through sewer pipes. All this is then topped by one of the most incredible endings in movie history, which it would be criminal to reveal for those who haven’t seen The Job before.

The Italian Job is extremely well served both by widescreen and LD. The former is constantly in use, with two-shot compositions of heads, striking long table conferences. Or action taking place on one side or the other. As for LD, there are numerous sleek cars (which always come over well on disc) with lots of carefully chosen sound effects to match, snaking alpine roads and panoramic Turin cityscapes (with traffic jams). And all those incredible stunts, some of which (cars rolling downhill, Minis atop stadium) are in long shot and thus need the clarity that only LD can provide: the Minis look particularly great racing through shallow water trailing spray.

Occasional white speckles are an irritation, but chaptering (seventeen in all) is adequate and there’s a nice unobtrusive side break. Would’ve been nice to have had the last thirty minutes in CAV, but otherwise the disc is hard to fault.