serious heist film, when he turned out "Rififi," best-remembered for its 20 minutes of dead silence on the screen, while the jewel theft, planned to the last detail, was executed.

Some years later, a noted Italian director, Mario Monicelli, executed a brilliant spoof of "Rififi" titled "Big Deal on Madonna Street." The film starred Vittorio Gassman and Marcello Mastroianni and was a howling success. It depicted the efforts of a gang of bumbling crooks and a ridiculously complex scheme for breaking into a pawnbroker's safe.
"The Italian Job," even to its setting, is most likely descended from the line of films inspired by "Big Deal," for Monicelli's film was not merely a heist film, it was a comedy-heist film-the first of a very popular addition to the ilk. Comedy heists are enjoyed so much by film-goers, that even Dassin felt obliged to try his hand at one with "Topkapi." In the film, Maximillian Schell, Melina Mercouri, Peter Ustinov and Robert Morely set out to rob the Museum of the Sultans in Istanbul.

In William Wyler's "How to Steal a Million" and in Ronald Neame's "Gambit," Peter O'Toole and Michael Caine, respectively, showed how to make money by stealing art masterpieces and replacing them with forgeries.

The list is a long one, the robberies many and varied, but Paramount's "The Italian Job" shows a heist that must rank as a cinematic
first: $4,000,000 in bullion are stolen by Michael Caine and his motley crew, when they snarl the traffic of Turin, Italy, into history's biggest traffic jam. The entire operation is directed from the safety of an English prison, by arch mastermind Noel Coward. The robbery is carried out under the noses of two opposing forces: the Italian police and the Mafia.
"The Italian Job" was produced in Color and Panavision by Michael Deeley, and was directed by Peter Collinson from a screenplay by Troy Kennedy Martin.