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00:00It was the bank that couldn't be robbed, the vault that couldn't be broken, the security
00:25system that couldn't be hacked.
00:28Until they came onto the scene, a crack team assembled by a mastermind, each one a specialist
00:33in the field, a master of their chosen art.
00:36They had a plan.
00:38They knew the security systems.
00:41They were dangerous.
00:43They were doing it for love, justice and money.
00:47And they knew how to make a quick getaway.
00:50But getting away with it was only half the job.
00:53Keeping it together would be something else.
00:56In this series, I'm looking at some of cinema's most enduring genres, from the rom-com to
01:00the horror movie.
01:01I'll be exploring the conventions which underwrite the movies we love the most, and examining
01:06the techniques filmmakers use to keep us coming back for more.
01:09And tonight, I'm going to show you how to pull off the perfect heist movie.
01:27Working on The Law of Averages, most of you watching this programme will be law-abiding
01:32citizens.
01:33Mostly.
01:34But the chances are that many of you will also have secretly dreamed of getting one
01:38over on the system.
01:39Whether it's discreetly fiddling your tax returns or audaciously scamming a bank for
01:44millions, everyone has daydreamed about the possibility of somehow outwitting the corporate
01:49bigwigs.
01:50As Lewis Culhern's Alonzo Emmerich points out in The Asphalt Jungle...
01:53Crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavour.
01:58So it's no surprise that crime stories strike a chord, returning time and again to a series
02:03of common themes and recurrent traits that are brilliantly encapsulated in John Houston's
02:081950 classic.
02:11The Asphalt Jungle is one of the first films to establish the basic story elements that
02:16would go on to form the conventions of the genre.
02:18Armed suspect.
02:19Tall man.
02:20Caucasian.
02:21Wearing a dark suit and soft hair.
02:24It's a classic American film noir with stark, angular photography and starker dialogue.
02:31It's the tale of big-hearted hooligan Dix Handley, played by Sterling Hayden, who gets
02:37wrapped up in a caper planned by Sam Jaffe's criminal mastermind, Doc Irwin Riedenschneider.
02:44Make your way up the back stairs and jump the alarm system.
02:46That'll take another three minutes.
02:49At exactly 11.54, Dix and I will come to the back door.
02:54You open it for us.
02:56This, by the way, is an early appearance of a now commonplace obstacle, the invisible
03:00alarm system.
03:02Here's the electric eye.
03:05The raid needs the specialist skills of a hand-picked bunch of crooks.
03:09Here goes.
03:13The plan to rob a jewellers shop will net at least half a million in diamonds, but the
03:17robbery doesn't quite go according to plan.
03:26One of the gang members gets shot during the getaway, and gradually everything starts to
03:31fall apart.
03:32Sounds familiar?
03:33Well, it should do.
03:35It's the basic plot of a heist movie.
03:38Let's look at the elements that make up that plot in a little more detail.
03:43In the first four scenes of the first act, we meet three key characters, Sterling Hayden's
03:48hooligan, James Whitmore's getaway driver, and Sam Jaffe's criminal mastermind.
03:55Lewis Culhern's criminal financier enters midway through, and the first act ends with
04:00a planning sequence featuring the whole gang.
04:06The second act is taken up with a dramatic sequence describing every intricate detail
04:10of the raid that is also a nail-biting race against time.
04:15Finally, the third act follows the demise of the gang, as one by one, they're either
04:20killed or arrested.
04:28Like every good genre structure, this basic plot has proved remarkably adaptable to different
04:34settings, characters, and concerns.
04:37Some filmmakers have particularly enjoyed using the heist narrative as a springboard
04:41to explore the moral ambiguities of crime, and to play with our sympathies.
04:46With that in mind, take a look at this opening scene from the Hughes Brothers' Dead Presidents.
04:51In my opinion, one of the best and most overlooked American movies of the 90s.
04:56It opens with a black screen, and the sound of a gun being cocked.
05:07As the score starts to pulse, we see a slow-mo image of a face painted white like a skull,
05:12scanning the barrel of a gun.
05:14The score picks up the pace, and we fade to a montage of burning banknotes, the dead presidents
05:19engulfed in flames.
05:23Everything about the scene tells us that these are dangerous people, hungry for money.
05:29But then, the film flashes back several years, to the northeast Bronx of 1968, to show us
05:34how these people got here.
05:46The rest of the movie follows the progress of Lorenz Tate's Anthony Curtis, a victim
05:51of circumstances beyond his control.
05:59Dead President shows us how this utterly sympathetic character could cross the line that would
06:04put him on the wrong side of the law.
06:09And one of the ways it tells that story is through a brilliant juxtaposition of images,
06:13which juggles timeframes to extraordinarily dramatic effect.
06:20Look at this edit, which, for my money, is one of the most powerful jump cuts of modern
06:24cinema.
06:29As Anthony runs through the Bronx backyards of his youth, the Hughes brothers cut to the
06:33battlefields of Vietnam, to which tens of thousands of young African-Americans were
06:38drafted.
06:40Brutalized by war, Anthony returns home to find his service is sorely undervalued, and
06:46he's drawn into crime.
06:50You might not immediately think of Dead Presidents as primarily a heist movie, but at the heart
06:56of its narrative is a heist, the event with which the film opens, and to which it returns.
07:02Many of the conventions we saw in the Asphalt Jungle also feature here.
07:07Anthony recruits a gang, and we watch them planning their bank job.
07:13But by the time we see the robbery play out in full, we know this is as much a story about
07:18the African-American experience as it is about a heist.
07:24What's intriguing is the way that the Hughes brothers, who are extremely cine-literate
07:28filmmakers, take that familiar mainstream motif and then twist it to their own personal
07:34ends.
07:38We're not done with our genre expectations, putting new riffs on an old tune.
07:45Dead Presidents is an example of the harder edge of the heist movie, but there's also
07:49a more playful side, one that enables us to indulge our illicit, law-breaking fantasies
07:55for fun.
07:57So let's explore those classic building blocks of the heist in more detail, beginning with
08:03the particular character type who's come to embody our secret criminal aspirations.
08:14Look at this opening sequence from Basil Dearden's 1960 film The League of Gentlemen.
08:20The brooding street shot from a low angle could come from the Asphalt Jungle, but now
08:24watch this.
08:30Here's Jack Hawkins emerging from a drain, and he's dressed in a spotless dinner suit.
08:48Hawkins is playing Lieutenant Colonel Norman Hyde, in many ways the epitome of the heroic
08:53rogue, the character who we may just have seen emerging from the gutter, but who we
08:57know instinctively as class.
09:01Now let's jump 41 years into the future, to the opening of Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's
09:06Eleven.
09:15Coming to the end of a five year stretch, George Clooney's character is also about
09:19to emerge from the underworld.
09:29Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven is a loose remake of the 1960 Frank Sinatra vehicle, which was
09:34itself a rat-packed Vegas relative of The League of Gentlemen.
09:45Both Hyde and Ocean, we know from the outset that these are shady, untrustworthy characters,
09:50involved in the sort of double dealing that we'd all avoid in real life.
10:03But the movies cast them as lovable rogues, charming criminal masterminds in whose company
10:08we'd be more than happy to spend some time.
10:12Notice how, to the strains of a finger-popping soundtrack, Clooney also surfaces from this
10:17underworld wearing a dinner suit.
10:25When Jack Hawkins emerged from that drain in 1960, he was taking the heist movie away
10:30from those dark shadows of the noir thriller into something altogether lighter, the crime
10:35caper, a playful examination of lawlessness which allows us to indulge our own criminal
10:41fantasies.
10:44Within this caper mould, figures like Hawkins and Clooney are heroic characters, with whom
10:49we'd feel safe in the knowledge that it's all harmless fun.
10:52Harmless, because the people they are robbing will, A, deserve it in some way, usually because
10:57they're actually much worse bad guys than the criminals with whom we side, or B, will
11:02be covered by the insurance and effectively won't lose a thing, apart from their pride.
11:07So the masterminds of these heist capers are modern-day Robin Hoods, and their appeal
11:11taps into deep-seated folk myths.
11:20But just as not all heist movies are capers, not all masterminds are lovable outlaws.
11:31They can be paternal mob bosses dispensing tough love, like Lawrence Tierney in Reservoir
11:36Dogs, or a more aggressive version of the Gentleman Crook, like Ian McShane's Teddy
11:46Bass in Sexy Beast.
11:57Sometimes they're just ordinary people, like you or me.
12:00People who've been pushed too far and aren't going to take it anymore, and will go to extraordinary
12:05lengths to rob a bank.
12:11As with Bill Murray's town planner, who turns criminal mastermind in quick change.
12:28You may have noticed in that quick round-up that there aren't that many women masterminds
12:32in heist movies.
12:34Since the fifties, women have tended to play a less-than-dominant role, usually billed
12:38as the mole, epitomised by Marilyn Monroe, who got her big break in All About Eve after
12:42playing Alonzo Emmerich's absurdly young mistress in The Asphalt Jungle.
12:55Generally if you wanted to find strong female characters in a crime movie, you had to look
12:58to the ruthless femme fatales of film noirs like Double Indemnity with Barbara Stanwyck.
13:28And you can find the descendants of those forties noir heroines in the modern heist
13:32movie Bound, a brilliant nineties crime picture from the Wachowskis who went on to direct
13:37The Matrix trilogy.
13:46The movie is a great example of how filmmakers can wrong-foot their audience by setting up
13:53stock conventions and turning them on their heads.
14:07In Bound, Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly occupy roles which, in traditional crime movies,
14:11would be powerless.
14:12Yet the Wachowskis reassign those roles.
14:23Gershon's character, Corky, is written as if male, a variant on Robert Mitchum roles
14:27from films like Out of the Past, Where Danger Lives and Angel Face, in all of which Mitchum
14:32plays the femme fatale's full guy.
14:58Tilly's character, Violet, is presented as a traditional mole, but transitions into mastermind,
15:04again more often a male role, making the nominal mob boss husband the powerless figure.
15:20Bound follows Corky and Violet as their relationship blossoms and they pull off a heist that makes
15:24schmucks of her husband and the puffed-up mafiosi around him.
15:42What makes Bound even more intriguing is that its writer-directors are both trans women,
15:47who made the film when they were still known as the Wachowski brothers.
15:53With one foot in the crime movie and another in the erotic thriller, Bound plays with our
15:57expectations of a genre which is far more slippery than it may at first seem.
16:06Most importantly, it tells us that the so-called rules of the genre exist to be broken.
16:12Often they're just waiting for someone brave enough or smart enough to do it.
16:21You'll remember that we left our Robin Hood figures George Clooney and Jack Hawkins as
16:25they emerged from the underworld into the light.
16:28But how do they assemble their gangs and what sort of oddball gets picked for a heist movie's
16:32criminal crew?
16:34Look at Jack Hawkins in the scene that follows his pre-title emergence from the underworld.
16:42He's at home cutting stacks of five-pound notes in half.
16:46The notes end up in the hands of Hawkins' erstwhile criminal gang.
16:50All ex-army men finding it difficult to cope with life in mufti.
17:02They include Richard Attenborough's Lieutenant Edward Lexie, a small-time East End crook,
17:08and Roger Livesey's Captain Mycroft, a priest impersonating conman with a line in literature
17:12probably not approved by the Church of England.
17:24Ah yes, the book.
17:27Take a closer look at the cover.
17:43The title of that book couldn't be more symbolic.
17:46It's a reminder of why the heist genre resonates so much with us, and why we enjoy this part
17:51of the story in particular.
17:53It taps into something that predates even Robin Hood by centuries, Jason assembling
17:58the world's first heist team, the Argonauts, to steal the fabulous Golden Fleece.
18:04Hawkins then goes on to explain to us, the audience, why he's brought this particular
18:08bunch of reprobates together.
18:15And what experts would they be then?
18:32Avengers Assemble.
18:34Back in the Asphalt Jungle, Sam Jaffe's Doc required a small crew of helpers.
19:04That would be Sterling Hayden.
19:06Last but not least, you need a psycho.
19:13It's essential to have one troublemaker on the team, whether it's Michael Madsen's loose
19:24cannon in Reservoir Dogs, or Jamie Foxx's batshit crazy bats in Baby Driver.
19:43Their function is to turn victory into disaster later in the film.
19:47Until then, they're like a ticking bomb primed to explode, and a great device to ratchet
19:53up the suspense.
19:59Ben Kingsley took the role of unhinged loose cannon to a new level in Sexy Beast, in which
20:03he played the shoutily psychotic Don Logan.
20:26Once again, it's worth noting that these so-called specialist teams are overwhelmingly male,
20:31a predictable trope of the heist genre.
20:35All of which brings us to the strange case of Set It Off, a mould-breaking crime picture
20:39from the mid-nineties which centres on an all-female African-American crew from South
20:44Central Los Angeles.
20:55Set It Off has all the makings of a classic heist movie.
21:01From the perpetrators who plan to take away from the system that's doing us all anyway,
21:05to the inevitable action sequences which escalate as things start to spiral out of control.
21:14Although the trailer sold Set It Off as an action movie, these are women dealing with
21:17recognisable contemporary issues, money, love, kids, fully-rounded characters rooted in day-to-day
21:54It's also interesting to note that Set It Off dumps the role of the mastermind, because
21:59it doesn't need one.
22:00These women are working together, they can manage on their own.
22:10The Steven Soderbergh production Oceans 8 may have been notable for its all-female core
22:15cast, but movies like Set It Off were treading this ground decades ago.
22:24Traditionally, the planning sequence is where the mastermind explains to their cohorts,
22:37and conveniently to us, the audience, the nature of the score.
22:41This is the view of the bank that you will see three weeks from today, gentlemen.
22:45Just before the armoured car arrives, a commissioner opens the side entrance to the bank.
22:51Maybe it's a bank, a casino, a jewel vault, an art collection.
22:55Arthur and Lorna park the three fast cars here in case anything goes wrong and we've
22:59got to make a quick getaway, right?
23:01Correct.
23:02Now, it's 12.10.
23:03The bullion van will be entering the piazza and will be forced slowly towards the centre.
23:09Traditionally, these sequences have a seductive allure, the thrill of seeing a finely-tuned
23:13job come together with great creative wit and ingenuity.
23:17Once we get down the shaft, though, then it's a piece of cake.
23:21Just two more guards with uzis and the most elaborate vault door ever conceived by man.
23:27The money you see being handled so calmly often amounts to over a million pounds.
23:34Like storyboarding a movie itself, this sequence tells us what things are going to look like
23:38if all goes according to plan, which inevitably it won't.
23:41We all know what to do at the point of attack because we've gone over this shit enough.
23:47If anybody gets caught, you shut the fuck up.
23:51The planning scene is such an essential staple that you'll find it in everything, from perhaps
23:56the most modest heist film ever made to the most ambitious.
24:02Christopher Nolan's psychological heist movie Inception is one of the biggest blockbusters
24:06of the 21st century.
24:08Leonardo DiCaprio leads a team of dream bandits who plot to break into Cillian Murphy's mind
24:13in order to change the future of a business empire.
24:17You know, I couldn't help but notice, but you wouldn't happen to be related to the Maurice
24:21Fisher, would you?
24:23Yes, he, um, he was my father.
24:26It's a multi-layered plot stunningly complemented by Oscar-winning cinematography and cutting-edge
24:31visual effects.
24:34But when Leo actually has to explain the score, forget all those eye-popping digital visuals,
24:40you can't beat a good old flip chart in a warehouse.
24:42I was split up from my father's empire.
24:45Now, this is obviously an idea that Robert himself would choose to reject, which is why
24:50we need to plant it deep in his subconscious.
24:53Subconscious is motivated by emotion, right?
24:55Not reason.
24:56It's shot like a classic heist planning sequence.
24:59Nolan places his camera at eye-level, as if we're sitting in the room ourselves.
25:03It couldn't be simpler or more effective.
25:05My father is stressed, to say the least.
25:08What can we run with that?
25:09These planning sequences don't just help us understand the score.
25:12More than any other scene in a heist movie, they make us feel like we're part of the gang,
25:16the unseen extra member of the team.
25:20Now look at this scene from Bill Forsyth's 1979 gem, That Sinking Feeling, a film which
25:26at the time of its release was the cheapest ever to play in UK cinemas.
25:30What's this area famous for?
25:33What's it well-known for?
25:36Drunks?
25:37Muggles?
25:39Multiple social deprivation?
25:41Sinks!
25:43Stainless steel sinks!
25:45Hundreds of them off at Martin's Warehouse!
25:48Sinks worth a fortune!
25:50This scene isn't so much a planning sequence as a lack of planning sequence, brilliantly
25:55satirising scenes from slicker movies.
25:57The sinks come at 60 quid apiece.
26:00I knew around there we could shift 80, maybe 90 of them into a van.
26:0360 times 90?
26:05That's over 100 quid.
26:08Written with the help of a Glasgow theatre group, the whole budget for That Sinking Feeling
26:12was around £5,000.
26:14It was made in 1979, 31 years before inception, so not adjusting for inflation, it was around
26:21£159,990,000 cheaper, give or take a few cents.
26:28Yet Forsyth's film has become an enduring favourite because it plays into popular underdog
26:33prejudices.
26:34We sympathise with our crew against their fat cat targets.
26:40Put it back.
26:41He's a break, Ronnie.
26:42It's my mother's birthday next week.
26:44Look, you know the rules.
26:45These things are too easily traced.
26:47Now put it back.
26:49Because the heist movie has been refining the planning sequence for decades, it's become
26:53incredibly adept at conveying enormous amounts of complex information in a very short time.
27:00Everyone pretty much agrees that the most cunning criminals on earth are bankers and
27:04stock traders.
27:05So it's no surprise that stories of their scams have been told using the conventions of the
27:10heist, in films like Martin Scorsese's Wolf of Wall Street, in which Leonardo DiCaprio
27:15gets to hatch yet more mischief with a whiteboard in a warehouse, and Adam McKay's The Big Short.
27:21Alright, you think we just warehouse it on the books?
27:24No.
27:25We just repackage it with a bunch of other shit that didn't sell, and put it into a CDO.
27:29A CDO?
27:30Yes.
27:31A CDO.
27:32What is that?
27:33This is where we take a bunch of Bs, BBs and BBBs that haven't sold, and we put them in
27:37a file.
27:40In both of these movies, characters take the explanatory conventions of the planning sequence
27:45to their natural conclusion, with characters breaking the fourth wall and talking directly
27:51to the audience.
27:52An IPO is an initial public offering.
27:54It's the first time a stock is offered for sale to the general population.
27:58Now, as the firm taking the company public, we set the initial sales price, then sold
28:02those shares right back to our friends.
28:04And that direct address once again makes us feel in on the deal, the privileged confidants
28:09of the mastermind.
28:11I know you're not following what I'm saying anyway, right?
28:14That's okay, that doesn't matter.
28:16The real question is this.
28:18Was all this legal?
28:20Absolutely fucking not.
28:22Both movies utilise heist techniques like assembling the team and the planning sequence
28:27to concisely illustrate the otherwise impenetrable schemes of bankers.
28:31Smartest of the bunch was Nicky Koskoff.
28:34He actually went to law school.
28:36I called him Rugrat because of his piece of shit hairpiece.
28:40But here, our nominal heroes, like Leonardo DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort and Ryan Gosling's
28:45Jared Venet, are actually unsympathetic bad guys who show absolutely no moral virtues whatsoever.
28:52My killers who will not take no for an answer, my fucking warriors, who will not hang up
28:59the phone and tell their client either buys or fucking dies!
29:07Yeah!
29:13Bizarrely, in order to tell the story of the shady trading that led to our worst stock market crashes,
29:19the conventions of the heist movie had to become so twisted that our protagonists were real bad guys
29:25and some of them more or less get away with it.
29:28Many heist movies don't actually personalise the law in the form of a specific cop.
29:33Instead, they follow the lead of the Asphalt Jungle and use the law as an ominous presence,
29:39glimpsed through curtains while the heist progresses and gradually moving closer as time ticks away.
29:49But as we've seen already, this is a genre that allows filmmakers to play with asphalt jungle
29:54Indeed, this is a genre that allows filmmakers to play with our sympathies and our sense of right and wrong
29:59and one way to do that is to boost up the role of the cop.
30:08The energetic heist scenes in Catherine Bigelow's Point Break, for instance,
30:12play second fiddle to a narrative exploring the notion that cops and robbers may not be so different after all.
30:18You're blowing it, man! You're breaking your own rules! You're pulling too much time!
30:22Who are we really rooting for? Keanu Reeves' FBI agent or Patrick Swayze's robber surfer?
30:28Even Keanu can't decide.
30:38Instead, by the end of the movie, Keanu has become so infatuated with his prey that he simply can't take him down.
30:44They are cut from the same cloth.
30:48Vaya con Dios.
30:53This convention is so well-worn that writer Charlie Kaufman took potshots at it
30:58in Spike Jonze's self-reflexive anti-thriller adaptation.
31:02Okay, but here's the twist. We find out that the killer really suffers from multiple personality disorder.
31:09Right? See? He's actually really the cop and the girl.
31:13All of them are him. Isn't that fucked up?
31:16The only idea more overused in Serial Killers is multiple personality.
31:20On top of that, you explore the notion that cop and criminal are really two aspects of the same person.
31:26See every cop movie ever made for other examples of this.
31:33The risk of slipping into cliché didn't deter director Michael Mann
31:37when he adapted his made-for-TV movie L.A. Takedown based on the real-life story of a young man.
31:44based on the real-life story of an ex-Alcatraz inmate and his police pursuer
31:49into the 1995 crime movie classic Heat.
31:54What do you say I buy you a cup of coffee?
31:57A heist movie that minutely explores the boundaries between the good guys and the bad guys
32:02and ultimately teaches us that in this world, everything is just shades of grey.
32:07I am never going back.
32:10Then don't take down Scores.
32:13I do what I do best. I take Scores. You do what you do best, trying to stop guys like me.
32:19The most celebrated scene from Heat is this sequence
32:23in which Al Pacino's cop and Robert De Niro's crook meet in a coffee shop on the eve of their coming showdown.
32:28Mann sets this scene up as a mirror image in which these two characters become reflections of each other.
32:35I don't know how to do anything else.
32:37Neither do I.
32:42I don't much want to either.
32:44Neither do I.
32:48The shots are simple but carefully coded.
32:51It's a colour film, but look at the use of darkness and shadow.
32:54We can see the legacy of German expressionism filtered here through the prism of film noir.
33:00You know, we're sitting here.
33:03You and I are like a couple of regular fellas.
33:06You do what you do, I do what I gotta do.
33:11And now that we've been face to face...
33:13The performances are carefully balanced in terms of script and screen time.
33:17Everything about this scene is telling us that these men are two sides of the same coin
33:22and encouraging us to see ourselves in both of them.
33:25If it's between you and some poor bastard whose wife you're going to turn into a widow,
33:32brother, you are going down.
33:37The casting of Pacino and De Niro gestures toward the Godfather trilogy,
33:41perhaps the most famous American crime series of all time.
33:45Within this single scene we can see the lineage of the crime thriller,
33:49from Europe to America, from black and white to colour, from past to present,
33:54left hand and right hand intertwined.
33:58But some of the best movies of recent years to play with the cop-criminal relationship
34:03have come from beyond European and American cinema.
34:06Hong Kong has a particularly strong tradition of undercover cop stories which explore this territory.
34:15In Andrew Lau and Alan Mack's Infernal Affairs, the cops don't just infiltrate the criminals,
34:20the criminals also infiltrate the cops.
34:24The result was remade by Martin Scorsese as The Departed,
34:28the movie which finally landed him overdue Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture.
34:34Yeah.
34:36You called this number on a dead guy's phone.
34:40Who are you?
34:42So it is you.
34:45Thank God you're alright. We were very worried.
34:49Who are you?
34:50This is Sergeant Sullivan. I'm taking over Queenen's unit.
34:55There are clear parallels too between Hong Kong director Ringo Lam's 1987 City on Fire
35:00and Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs made five years later.
35:06Reservoir Dogs is a heist movie with a difference,
35:08the difference being that we never actually see the job itself,
35:11only its build-up and its bloody aftermath.
35:14It's a budget-saving technique seen before in films like The Nightmare Before Christmas
35:18and it's a budget-saving technique seen before in films like the 1950 noir Gone Crazy,
35:23but it's still a bold move because at the heart of most heist movies is the heist.
35:36Watch this, it's the start of the heist sequence from Refifi,
35:40a movie made in Paris just five years after The Asphalt Jungle.
35:44Director Jules Dassin also plays a specialist safe-cracker,
35:47employed by mastermind Tony to help mount an audacious raid on a jeweller's shop.
35:57This heist isn't a hold-up, but a carefully staged break-in from the upstairs apartment.
36:03Described by American critic Roger Ebert as the father of all later movies
36:07in which thieves carry out complicated robberies,
36:10Refifi boasts a near-wordless 28-minute break-in sequence,
36:14the influence of which is still being felt today.
36:22There's no music to tell the story, just the sound of the thieves at work.
36:31The careful pace makes us feel like we're watching the burglary unfold in real time.
36:37In a particularly brilliant touch,
36:39Dassin's character César chooses ballet pumps as his footwear,
36:43baffling the sounds of his feet,
36:45allowing him to dance through the heist in silence.
36:57Editor Roger Dwyer heightens the tension and sense of silence
37:01by peppering the scene with perfectly placed spot sounds.
37:07BELL RINGS
37:12A piece of music was composed for the sequence by Georges Auric,
37:15but after seeing the cut...
37:19..Auric himself agreed that it should run silent.
37:26The effect is that we pay attention to every detail, every sound.
37:30It's as if we're in the room ourselves.
37:37BELL RINGS
37:43Compare that scene from Refifi, which Dassin made in 1955,
37:47with this scene from Brian De Palma's 1996 Hollywood blockbuster Mission Impossible.
38:06BELL RINGS
38:12And Refifi was also parodied, along with numerous other titles,
38:16in Nick Park's wonderful short The Wrong Trousers.
38:22Managing to be hilarious and suspenseful,
38:25The Wrong Trousers is full of the ingredients we've come to enjoy,
38:29like photoelectric and hair-trigger alarms.
38:32And again, not a word is spoken.
38:36BELL RINGS
38:41Watch the beads of sweat as the penguin nearly drops the diamond.
38:45BELL RINGS
38:50The Wrong Trousers predates Mission Impossible by three years,
38:54so Tom Cruise is playing an incredibly close version of Nick Park's penguin
38:58as he negotiates alarms so sensitive they can be triggered by a single drop of sweat.
39:04Nick Park took his lead from Dassin.
39:07COUGHS
39:15That photoelectric alarm system,
39:17which almost proved the undoing of The Wrong Trousers,
39:20has been dodged by some of the most supple actors in the business.
39:2475 seconds.
39:28In fact, it's turned into one of those show-stopping scenes we expect
39:32from a certain kind of high-tech heist movie,
39:35as the makers of Entrapment knew very well.
39:38Here, lasers form Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery's major obstacle.
39:44Freeze. You're blocking the beam. I can't see it.
39:48Got it covered.
39:59Clever girl.
40:02Meanwhile, back in London in 1960,
40:04Jack Hawkins' gang brought a less delicate approach to their heist.
40:09SCREAMS
40:11Do as you're told and no-one will get hurt.
40:14This armed raid features many visual and physical tropes
40:17that have been echoed or refined in subsequent movies.
40:20It's down. Ah, it's down.
40:22Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. May I have your attention, please?
40:25OK. All right. OK.
40:28Turn around. All of you, turn the fuck around. Don't move.
40:31We want to hurt no-one. We're here for the bank's money, not your money.
40:34Your money's insured by the federal government. You're not going to lose a dime.
40:37Remember how we were made to pay all that close attention back in the planning sequence?
40:41Well, here's where it pays off.
40:43We can enjoy the fast-moving action
40:45without getting hopelessly confused about what's going on.
40:51Heist movies often deploy one of the oldest techniques in cinema,
40:54known as parallel editing.
40:56Here, the action cuts between simultaneous events
40:59at two or more different locations.
41:01For instance, a guard or policeman outside the bank
41:04and the criminals inside.
41:07Can you believe this? Goddammit!
41:09Shit!
41:13Don't move! Don't move!
41:15It's a simple but effective way of creating and sustaining suspense,
41:19immersing the viewer in the risks and dangers of the heist.
41:23What the fuck is wrong with you?
41:25Don't move. We've got a minute and a half to make it.
41:28You, go! You, don't move!
41:37Parallel editing was pioneered by Edwin S. Porter
41:40in The Great Train Robbery, the landmark 1903 film
41:43which also gave us location shooting and composite editing.
41:47Porter showed two simultaneous actions
41:49happening in different places to create dramatic tension.
41:53It's been a favourite method of heist movie directors ever since.
41:57More than 100 years after Porter's groundbreaking classic,
42:01Christopher Nolan pushed the boundaries of parallel editing
42:05in his 21st-century heist movie Inception.
42:09Here, Nolan and his editor Lee Smith
42:12juggled multiple simultaneous events
42:14happening in dreamscapes at different levels of consciousness
42:18to build the extraordinary, drawn-out, climactic sequence of the picture.
42:29We saw earlier on how heist movies often feature planning sequences
42:33that show how things should go down,
42:35but invariably something goes wrong.
42:38Sometimes random fate lends a hand,
42:40in the shape of youngsters innocently collecting licence plate numbers
42:43in The League of Gentlemen,
42:45or a suitcase full of loot breaking open in The Killing.
42:58But more commonly, it's the fault of the weakest link in the gang,
43:02the psycho, or the snitch,
43:04or the person who's just too human to do the job.
43:08Or the person who's just too human to see it through.
43:11What did you do, baby?
43:13What the fuck did you do?
43:15I moved.
43:16You moved? I'll fucking kill you!
43:18And then there are the films in which the sheer level of criminal ineptitude
43:21is itself the point of the movie.
43:23Drop your weapon!
43:27Think of Robert Pattinson's desperately misguided robber, Connie,
43:30in the recent indie hit Good Time,
43:32directed by the talented Safdie brothers.
43:36Connie recruits his brother, who has learning disabilities,
43:39as his accomplice in a half-baked heist...
43:42It's just you and me. I'm your friend, all right?
43:45..to show him a good time.
44:06But Connie's making it up as he goes along.
44:09In a heist movie, that's a cardinal sin.
44:23In some ways, Connie is the cinematic descendant of Al Pacino's Sonny
44:28from Sidney Lumet's 70s classic Dog Day Afternoon.
44:36Hey, freeze! Nobody move! Get over there!
44:41OK.
44:42Inspired by the real-life story of haphazard bank robber John Wadowitz,
44:47Dog Day Afternoon paints Pacino's character as a sympathetic putz,
44:51who's also motivated by love.
44:54He wants to fund his partner's gender reassignment.
44:58You want that fucking operation, right?
45:00You're giving me that shit, everybody's giving me that shit.
45:03You're giving me that shit, everybody's giving me shit.
45:05Everybody needs money, you know what I mean?
45:07So, you needed money, I got your money, that's it.
45:10In both Dog Day Afternoon and Good Time,
45:13the heists happen early in the film and both go spectacularly wrong.
45:27Connie spends the rest of the movie digging himself into an ever-deeper hole.
45:33While in Dog Day Afternoon, Pacino's desperate sonny
45:36becomes increasingly focused on how he's going to get away with it.
45:46When things go wrong in a crime movie, there's usually only one thing for it.
45:50Run, or more often, drive.
45:57The getaway has been a staple of the crime movie since its inception,
46:01mutating into The Car Chase, which has become one of cinema's favourite set pieces.
46:10From The Italian Job in 1969 to The Driver in 1978,
46:15there was a spate of crime and heist movies featuring
46:18ever more elaborate and destructive car chases.
46:23And in the space of less than a decade,
46:25you see a big evolution in how they were filmed.
46:31Look at this famous sequence from The Italian Job.
46:34Bright colours, carefully framed shots covering highly choreographed action.
46:38It's a delight to watch, but you never feel any real sense of danger.
46:44But just two years later, crime thriller The French Connection
46:47really put the audience in the driver's seat.
46:51Director William Friedkin was charged by his producer Phil D'Antoni
46:54to stage a chase that would top previous genre classics.
47:02SCREECHING
47:08The problem is, there was no chase in the script
47:11or in the true-life book upon which the film was based.
47:14So one afternoon, Friedkin and D'Antoni decided to take a walk and see what happened.
47:19And as they walked, they saw the trains going by overhead on the elevated railway line,
47:24and the idea struck them, why don't we have a car chase
47:28in which the car chases the train?
47:32The French Connection chase became something of a cinematic milestone.
47:38One of the reasons it's so convincing is that these streets are crowded
47:41and filled with people, pedestrians, other drivers,
47:44all of whom get in the way of Popeye Doyle's speeding vehicle.
47:49The chase scene has a terrific sense of verisimilitude.
47:52It looks real, and some of it was.
47:55Director Friedkin challenged stunt driver Bill Hickman to really show me something,
48:00a challenge Hickman met by speeding through ten blocks,
48:04running red lights, dodging cars, and actually creasing a city bus in the process.
48:10In another famous sequence, a car pulled out in front of Popeye Doyle's vehicle,
48:15causing a real-life collision, captured on film and worked into the narrative.
48:21The French Connection was one of many movies
48:24to which director Edgar Wright looked for inspiration when making Baby Driver,
48:28his love letter to films like The Driver, The Getaway, Freebie and the Bean,
48:32and William Friedkin's To Live and Die in LA.
48:35But conventions are there to be twisted and broken,
48:38and Wright decided to do something different with Baby Driver,
48:41to make a car chase thriller disguised as a musical.
48:44The French Connection meets an American in Paris.
48:48The chases in Baby Driver feel both dangerous and stylish.
48:53The movie is a masterclass in film editing.
48:56Wright and his editors Paul Matchless and Jonathan Amos
48:59bring a physicality and rhythmically musical joy to the proceedings.
49:05Although Baby Driver is a heist movie, it has its roots in a pop video
49:09which Wright made in 2003 for Mint Royale's Blue Song,
49:12in which Noel Fielding danced in the seat of a parked getaway car
49:16while his buddies were chasing him.
49:18It's the first time in a long time that we've seen a movie
49:21that's so much more than just a movie.
49:23It's the first time in a long time that we've seen a movie
49:26that's so much more than just a movie.
49:28It's the first time in a long time that we've seen a movie
49:31where Noel Fielding danced in the seat of a parked getaway car
49:34while his buddies pull a job.
49:44Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
49:46Indeed, Baby Driver opens with an explicit nod to its small screen dry-run,
49:51with Ansel Elgort lip-synching to Bellbottoms
49:53by the John Spencer blues explosion.
49:55Bellbottom!
49:57Bellbottom!
49:59while his cohorts rob a bank.
50:18Later, he halts a job until he's correctly queued up the frantic bass riff opening of The Damned's
50:23Neat, Neat, Neat.
50:36Look at the way these scenes are cut to the beat and themes of the songs.
50:47Although the narrative of the film is one of criminals on the run,
50:51everything about the look and more importantly the editing of Baby Driver tells you that you're watching a song and dance routine.
50:58No wonder Baby dances his way through the opening credits.
51:04More in the manner of Gene Kelly than Gene Hackman.
51:08I don't want you to go around.
51:20Even in more traditional heist movies, the characters are often allowed a brief moment to dance or at least to celebrate
51:26when it looks like they've pulled off the job.
51:33After the extreme tension of the heist, it's a moment of transcendent joy.
51:38The
51:41underdogs have beaten the system.
51:45But in drama, every high point has a corresponding low.
51:49It's like a law of physics,
51:51which means that if we're only three quarters of the way through the film and the characters are already uncorking the champagne,
51:58well, the bubble is about to burst.
52:07Oh
52:24There's a classic example of this unraveling in Refefe.
52:28A textbook error by Cesar who pockets a diamond ring for his lover provides the crack in the plan through which everything starts to fall.
52:37Oh
52:44Gradually everyone turns on each other.
52:52This falling apart is typical of the heist genre.
53:08So
53:23Francois Truffaut said in his review of the movie that Refefe is structured like a classical tragedy.
53:29Act one, preparation for a hold-up. Act two,
53:33consummation of the hold-up. Act three, punishment, vengeance, death.
53:39You can see that tragic pattern playing out time and time again in heist movies.
53:43Whatever the characters and their targets or motives may be, whether they're robbing jewelers or banks.
53:51And then there's the fascinating case of Kelly Ricard's film Night Moves, an existential thriller in which three supposedly well-intentioned
53:59but mismatched eco-warriors
54:01conspire to blow up a hydroelectric dam.
54:04Which way are you going back?
54:06About 26 across the mountain.
54:08It's out of the way, but there's more traffic we can blend in.
54:11When we split up we shouldn't talk on the phone. Yeah, no way. Yeah, no contact. No contact.
54:16The first half of the film is a deftly executed blend of psychological intrigue and growing heist movie tension.
54:23The raid itself achieves nail-biting levels of suspense.
54:27The bomb is planted in silence with Ricard clearly taking inspiration from Riffifi.
54:40But after the heist in which someone dies, everything falls apart. The bombers turn on each other.
54:50The purpose of the mission is lost and the wide-eyed idealism of the first act is replaced by the duplicity,
54:56distrust and disintegration of the third act.
55:00It's a bleak yet brilliant film that reminds us of a key theme of so many heist movies.
55:05That pulling off the job is one thing, but keeping it together afterwards is another matter.
55:18Not every heist movie has to end grimly.
55:21But as we've seen, this is a genre shot through with moral ambiguity in which we're encouraged to identify with thieves and even killers.
55:29These aren't the kind of characters who tend to get conventional happy endings.
55:33And two heist movies in particular capture that ambiguity with their final images.
55:39Take the end of The Italian Job. It's literally a cliffhanger,
55:43perfectly symbolizing the tricky moral balancing act we've had to play while watching the film.
55:51Hang on a minute, lads. I've got a great idea.
56:02Then look at the conclusion of Inception, a heist movie made 42 years later, also featuring Michael Caine.
56:10The final shot leaves us with a delicately balanced spinning top,
56:14wondering if our hero really did get away with it, or if this is all a tragic dream.
56:21So
56:33If we've learned anything from the story of the heist, it's that
56:36even if the audiences desperately want our heroes to get away with it,
56:40either the censors or our own inbuilt sense of morality
56:44will insist that in the end crime doesn't pay.
56:51All present and correct, sir.
56:57Unless you happen to be a banker.
56:59So I was right.
57:01I took a rash of shit for two years, but
57:04I was right and
57:06everyone was wrong.
57:09And yeah, I got a bonus check for it. Sue me.
57:12You know?
57:13Earlier in this program, we saw the beginning of Dead Presidents with the young anti-heroes preparing to pull a deadly heist.
57:21Let's finish with the end of that film, with Lorenz Tate's Anthony, who has served and suffered in Vietnam,
57:28facing so-called justice and refusing to go quietly.
57:33Anthony Curtis, for your participation in this crime,
57:36a crime that took the lives of several innocent people,
57:39I do hereby sentence you to the custody of the Attorney General of the United States for a period of 15 years to life.
57:46Oh my God.
57:48These proceedings are concluded. This court is adjourned.
57:53Life?
57:54What do you mean life?
57:56All the shit I did for this motherfucking country. What the fuck he talking about life?
58:00Then fuck you! Fuck you!
58:02Hey!
58:04All the shit I did for this motherfucking country!
58:06Remove the prisoner from the court!
58:08You hear me?
58:10Fuck you!
58:13Hang it up!
58:19Next time, how to make a classic coming-of-age movie from Rebel Without a Cause to Lady Bird.
58:42Subscribe to our channel for more of the romance and drama from Becca's season of The Bachelorette!