A corkscrew picture with so many twists and turns you may need to take notes. I love the screenplay idea that first shows how the theft is supposed to go, and then shows how it really goes. Very imaginative and a perfect set-up for comedy. As it is, the movie's a rather light- hearted caper film where everybody outwits everybody else, but no one really gets hurt.Caine's perfect as the conniving English gentleman. Besides no one wears upscale suits as well as he. MacLaine too is a dazzler in her many gowns; let's just hope they weren't paying her by the word. Note how athletic she is, a skill from her days as a dancer, I suppose. It's sort of good to see the scary Herbert Lom as the Big Cheese rich guy. I'm troubled, however, because his commanding presence always makes me bolt from the chair and stand at attention.Anyway, there are echoes here from 1964's Topkapi, but this one's more plot heavy. Then too, I can't decide whether that very last twist is just one too many or a perfect way to end a corkscrew film. All in all, it's an imaginative heist movie at a time when there were lots, but this one's as good as any. Besides, I nominate Caine and MacLaine as the eye-catching couple of the decade, or maybe longer.

Gambit (1966)I love both Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine, and yet I went into the movie with low expectations. Maybe this was partly the dull poster art (which is all I had to go on), or just the fact I had never heard of the movie (and I see a lot of movies from this era).And it was really good! Yes, a fun, snappy, somewhat contrived but still engaging piece of very 1960s entertainment. It begins with a narrative trick, which I can't reveal, but the first twenty minutes is a kind of set-up or reference point for the next hour. Once you see it happen, it's a big laugh, and they actors play it out well, though with a slight bit of camp. Caine plays a thief and con man, and MacLaine is just a willing and slightly naive participant. At first.We are supposed to believe, as well, that these two young charming people are not made for each other (they act disinterested), but the love story becomes a small part of the situation. The third main actor is Herbert Lom, who plays an Arab connected to oil (this is several years before the oil embargo, and more than a decade before the first big Islamic uprising, the one in Iran in 1979). He happens to be the richest man in the world. And a target for this British man looking for easy success.Easy it is, if only things were what they seemed at first. Brightly lit, photographed with verve and acted with a kind of wink to the camera, the movie is just good fun. This isn't a drama, it's a comedy, and it will brighten your day even if you have to ignore the forced twists in the plot. Michael Caine had just finished filming the astonishing "Alfie" which is both funny and truly dramatic, and he was proving to be a complex and yet still caddishly likable leading man, very British. Shirley MacLaine (an American) had been making charming funny movies for some time, playing the cute and vulnerable "girl" over and over (as in "The Apartment" best of all, but see "Irma la Douce" too, where she is a prostitute). Together here they are really well matched and hold up the movie start to finish. Remember to make it through the "set-up" part of the movie, which will at first seem a little stiff. It makes sense later!

Highly enjoyable mid-sixties fluff. A well-teamed Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine play a thief and his not so willing cohort. Caine attempts to steal a priceless statue from the world's wealthiest man (Herbert Lom) and pays MacLaine to help him. Things do NOT go as Caine plans. Lom, looking very tanned, is on to him immediately and MacLaine gives him more trouble than he expected. Directed by Ronald Neame, the film is a fun, cleverly scripted caper. Caine and MacLaine have terrific chemistry and Lom, usually playing high strung characters, is very good in a rare low-key performance. The swinging music score is by Maurice Jarre and Clifford Stine was responsible for the (very colorful) photography.

I just watched this again, after a period of many years; I think that I must have seen it in its original release, and it would have seemed wildly glamorous and exotic at the time. Its always been a favorite of mine; I love it when MacLaine finally opens her mouth and starts talking, and the entire story tilts and veers off in an amusingly different direction.So very many things could have gone wrong with this production, and MacLaine could have completely overwhelmed it. Miraculously, everything stays in harness and no scenery gets chewed (as opposed to, say, "Topkapi", which although fun goes completely over the top, and where Mercouri lustily devours everything in sight). Caine and MacLaine were both in their early 30's at the time, and MacLaine gets away with photographing much younger. Its one of the earliest of her films where she got top billing; she had been making a series of Hollywood big-budget bombs, and I suspect that this somewhat modest entry kind of redeemed her. Its great straight entertainment.