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Michael Caine’s heist comedy has been rated one of the top UK movies ever. It’s a flip Swingin’ England slapstick thriller, lavishly produced and with an emphasis on fancy cars. Caine is a cockney crook with an insane scheme to steal millions in Red Chinese gold in Turin. Slick stuntwork combines with ‘Team Brit’ humor for a wild escape in a rush hour traffic jam. The lavish goes for show-off spectacle — its real stars are a trio of undersized, underdog UK automobiles.

The Italian Job 4K

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1969 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 99 min. / Street Date January 31, 2023 / Available from / 39.95

Starring: Michael Caine, Noël Coward, Benny Hill, Raf Vallone, Tony Beckley, Rossano Brazzi, Margaret Blye, Irene Handl, Michael Standing, Harry Baird, Robert Rietty, Lelia Goldoni, Valery Leon, Lisa Shane.

Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe

Production Designer: Disley Jones

Art Director: Michael Knight

Film Editor: John Trumper

Stunt Driving:...

It’s the ‘other’ version of Dickens’ terrific novel, an English film that few Americans have seen. This Australian DVD is in the Pal format and from a rather outdated transfer, yet I thoroughly enjoyed seeing a favorite story enacted by a great batch of UK talent. Dirk Bogarde stars and the many character roles go to familiar faces: Cecil Parker, Athene Seyler, Ian Bannen, Alfie Bass, Rosalie Crutchley, Freda Jackson, Christopher Lee, Leo McKern, Donald Pleasence, Eric Pohlmann, Danny Green and the lovely Marie Versini. It’s a regular actor-spotting quiz. Ralph Thomas directed and much of the film was shot in France … with excellent English diction.

A Tale of Two Cities

Region 2 Pal DVD

Viavision (Australia)

1958 / B&w / 1:33 adapted flat / 117 min. / Street Date January 5, 2022 / Available from Viavision / 19.95 au

Starring: Dirk Bogarde, Dorothy Tutin, Cecil Parker, Stephen Murray, Athene Seyler, Paul Guers, Marie Versini, Ian Bannen, Alfie Bass,...

The Lon Chaney silent The Hunchback of Notre Dame is an important document, and a pretty good movie, especially if you can see it projected. William Dieterle's 1939 film with Charles Laughton is an outright classic, with iconic casting in every role, but in a way it, like its predecessor, is as much a travesty of Victor Hugo's story as the Disney version. Tragedy is softened, hard edges blurred. (And actually there's a lot to admire in the cartoon: an epic cinematic scale and vision, use of humor that doesn't actually wreck the serious aspects. It's just that, starting with Quasimodo not being deaf—because he has to sing, you see—means you're not filming Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo at all.)So it was perhaps inevitable that the French would one day have to show us how it's done, and present a more faithful rendering of the book.

Voice actor Robert Rietti has died, aged 92.

Rietti was known for lending his voice to James Bond villains when filmmakers wanted to re-record lines.

According to The Times, Rietti died on April 3.

Among the villains he dubbed were Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi) in 1965's Thunderball and Ernst Stavro Blofeld (John Hollis) in 1981's For Your Eyes Only.

"In nearly every Bond picture, there's been a foreign villain, and in almost every case, they've used my voice," Rietti once said.

Throughout his career, he also voiced characters in The Guns of Navarone (1961), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Barbarella (1968), Frenzy (1972), Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Trail of the Pink Panther (1982).

Some movies just vanish.

While Costa-Gavras continues to enjoy a high reputation for his sixties and seventies political thrillers (perhaps more respected than watched, which is a shame) and to some extent for his later American movies (more watched than respected, also a shame), The Sleeping Car Murders (1965), one of his earliest works, is so hard to see that I wound up watching a pan-and-scanned off-air recording taped on VHS from Scottish Television sometime in the eighties, and dubbed into English. At least Simone Signoret seems to have done her own re-voicing, but her erring husband Yves Montand has that strained Amurrican tone I associate with Robert Rietty doing Orson Welles.

So Costa-Gavras' movie, formerly a missing person, turns up as a homicide victim, mutilated to prevent identification. With the performances defaced, the compositions utterly ruined, and the editing patterns minced in this copy (because a cut doesn't mean the...

As the undisputed king of American gothic, Vincent Price holds a unique position regarding his association with British horror. From the mid sixties, nearly all his films were made in the UK, and while not as distinguished as The House of Usher (1960), Tales of Terror (1962) and The Raven (1963), they are not without interest. As an actor perfectly suited to English gothic, Price’s output includes two career-defining performances. In a nutshell, he had the best of both worlds.

Masque of the Red Death (1964)

The British phase of his career began with a bang. After directing all of Price’s Poe chillers for American International Pictures, Roger Corman wanted to give the formula a fresh approach by making his next film in England. Aip’s Samuel Z Arkoff and James H Nicholson had already produced several European films, so the next step was to establish a London base with Louis M Heyward in charge.

When it comes to foreign language films, fans are split into two groups; those who like them with subtitles, and those who prefer them dubbed into English. For a foreign movie to make any kind of commercial impact beyond the art-house circuit, they would need to be made, or at least be reasonably well dubbed, in English, since it’s the most common language for mainstream cinema entertainment. All too often dubbing tends to dampen the impact of a very good film, especially if the actors’ English voices sound completely wrong. Brilliant movies such as the French cop thriller La Balance (1982) and the Japanese social drama Battle Royale (2002) would never achieve their iconic status if they were released in badly dubbed English.

But dubbing can work to hilarious effect in the Godzilla movies and with some of the lesser spaghetti westerns. In some cases low budget American producers buy the...

We recently reported that Peter Morgan, who penned The Queen and Frost/Nixon, will be co-scripting the new James Bond movie with Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, and that Afghanistan might factor into the plot-line somehow.

Now comes word from The Guardian that Michael Sheen, who has collaborated in the past with Morgan on the aforementioned movies, is in negotiations to play Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Bond 23.

Blofeld back for Bond 23...? That's what the UK paper is reporting.

"Michael is hot property right now and it is felt that he's the right man to bring Blofeld back to life," an unnamed source revealed. "Michael was a Bond fan in his youth, so this would be a dream role for him."

Blofeld is the head of Spectre and has appeared in six previous James Bond installments: From Russia with Love (1963), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), On Her Majesty's Secret Service...

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Dario Argento and Sir Christopher Frayling at the Sergio Leone tribute in London.(Photo: Mark Mawston) In honour of what would have been Sergio Leone’s 80th birthday, Sir Christopher Frayling, the late director’s internationally acclaimed biographer, hosted a celebration of the legenary filmmaker’s work at the Italian Cultural Institute in London on Wednesday evening.

Sir Christopher, who has penned the foreword to Dave Worrall and Lee Pfeiffer’s upcoming book ‘The Westerns of Clint Eastwood’, invited Dave, along with Cinema Retro contributors, and authors in their own right, Matthew Field and Howard Hughes, and photographer Mark Mawston to this private tribute.

Posters from Sergio Leone’s movies adorned the walls, providing a fitting backdrop to the evening, which began with a talk on Leone’s career by Frayling (illustrated with a slideshow) followed by an on-stage interview with famed Italian director Dario Argento,...