Not a particularly highly regarded film - especially not by its grumpy star - and I can't recall a movie that cried out more to be shot in colour, but I found it entertaining. Stewart Granger is an art thief who pinches an expensive painting on behalf of gangster George Sanders, but then pretends to lose it, get it copied by Pier Angeli and sell the copies.
This plot seems heavily inspired by the real life theft of the Mona Lisa (as with that Granger steals the painting by pretending to be a workman) - I wonder why they didn't have the Mona Lisa, it might have given the picture more of a selling point.
Anyway the stuff involving the theft and the forgery was interesting. Granger is well cast as a rogue and I loved how the script made it clear he was a genuine art lover; Sanders is always fun as a villain (or at least was then, before his boredom got to be infectious).
Pier Angeli is utterly lovely but her role is the weakest link in the movie - she comes on screen virginal and pure etc etc and you just know that Granger is going to turn good because of her, and the movie can't come up with an extra twist or turn to compensate. I don't mind a goody-goody but she's so passive - for the story really to work the forger needed to be all for the plan, but instead Angeli is against it but goes along with it for a bit and... anyway, it's unsatisfactory. Maybe the mistake was making her a forger - although the fact she's also young enough to be Granger's daughter is distracting. It also suffers from the lack of a decent climax - the baddies are set to do something but don't and in the end both get away.
(Interestingly this film reminded me a bit of Mara Maru, which was another tale of an old handsome rogue - played in that film by Errol Flynn - who started off greedy but then finds morality via the love of a good woman and returns an artefact to the Catholic Church).
But there are some good things: Granger, Sanders, the location work (even though, as said, you want it to be in colour), a decent support cast (including Normal Lloyd). I wish it had been funnier with a stronger female lead but it passes the time well enough.
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