Breaking the Bank at Monte Carlo

Next in our Edward G. Robinson festival, Seven Thieves (1960) is not a comedy. But it comes later in his career, when it made as much sense to cast him as a professor as well as a gangster.

It is set in Monaco. Robinson has invited Rod Steiger out for reasons he hasn't explained. Steiger has gotten out of prison recently, and it seems he is there because he was a student of Robinson. Now, Robinson wants to make it up to him with one last big score. Steiger is not too pleased, but hears him out. Robinson needs Steiger because he can trust him. But the other members have to approve him. Steiger points to beatnik Eli Wallach and hot chick Joan Collins, and says, those two? Yes, says Robinson, and three more.

They go to a strip club where Collins is dancing to Wallach's sax. Steiger figures out who the other thieves are: Alexander Scourby, the sweaty pervert who is infatuated with Collins (and happens to work at the casino), Michael Dante, the cool safe cracker, and Berry Kroeger, a German heavy. In the end, they agree to work with Steiger, and he agrees to lead them. So they go to work.

First, a run-through for timing, then the actual job. It's like most heist films, and in fact, has been ripped off by a few, including Ocean's Eleven. There is some derring-do climbing the outside of the casino, in a high wind over a long drop. There is the usual patron who appears to die, and the management wanting to remove him discretely. (Management represented by the rotund Sebastian Cabot.) And, amazingly, it all goes according to plan - until the getaway.

Robinson is wonderful in this. He was once a doctor, a professor in fact, but after serving time, he couldn't get a real job any more. But his last big haul isn't done for the money (mostly), but to prove a point - to achieve the perfect crime. There's another odd movie of his, The Amazing Doctor Clitterhouse (amazing name, too), where he is a professor of criminology, who takes over Humphrey Bogart's gang to get into the mind of a criminal. That detached scholarly air is very similar to his style here. But Rod Steiger is also great - I don't think I've seen him in much, but know him by reputation. I even like Joan Collins here, and I'm usually pretty much immune. Wallach as a philosophically nihilist criminal beatnik is pretty good, as well.