As The Italian Job turns 50, a new book reveals the truth behind its iconic cliffhanger ending

The ending of The Italian Job is one of the most famous in cinema history. The coach carrying Charlie Croker’s gang and their stolen gold bullion to Switzerland skids off a road in the Alps. Half of the coach is now hanging in space, anchored only by the weight of the gang huddled together at the front. But the gold is slowly edging towards the back.

Croker crawls towards the stash that seems so close, and yet so far. He rolls on to his back, looks towards the gang and says: ‘Hang on a minute lads, I’ve got a great idea!’

Yet this literal cliffhanger was not in the original script. That ended with Croker, played by Michael Caine, and the gang delivering the gold they have stolen from Fiat in Turin to Geneva, where it is banked on their behalf by two respectable-looking businessmen. The gang wait for the pair to emerge with the safe deposit number. But as they do, the two are gunned down by the Mafia. The boys are able to extract only half the number before both men die.

As the cult film The Italian Job reaches its 50th anniversary, a new book reveals that the film’s famous cliffhanger ending (above) wasn’t in the original script

A different version of the screenplay also ends in Geneva. Croker deposits the gold and walks out to find the square crawling with the Mafia. Altabani, the Mafia boss, confronts Croker, demanding the receipt. Croker pulls a lighter from his pocket: ‘If I can’t have it, you can’t have it.’ He brings the receipt and the flame together as the gang looks on.

Another conclusion saw Croker and the gang deliver the gold back to crime lord Mr Bridger in England. To their surprise, he orders them to return it. He has made a deal with Altabani. Croker protests, but to no avail. ‘Never mind lads, we’ll find something better,’ Croker tells his gang. ‘We’ll do something really big.’ ‘What could be bigger than Fiat?’ ‘Haven’t you heard of General Motors?’ Croker says with a smile.

But each of these scenarios would have been expensive to shoot. So it was that one of the most iconic movie endings ever was dreamed up on the hoof by the producer to save money.

The star who couldn’t remember his lines

The Italian Job is about a daring heist, when Croker and a team of English villains defy the Italian Mafia to steal a shipment of gold bullion being delivered to Fiat. They make their audacious getaway in three Minis, having paralysed the city by hacking into the traffic lights system. It was written with Michael Caine in mind by Troy Kennedy Martin. ‘I wanted to do a caper which would, in some way, incorporate the spirit of individualism, confidence and cockiness that existed in London in the Sixties,’ Kennedy Martin said.

The director was Peter Collinson, who had a reputation as a risk-taker. Gianni Agnelli, the head of Fiat, based in Turin, was sent the script and was amused by it. He did everything he could to facilitate filming, including having a word with the chief of police. ‘When Agnelli said yes, the city said yes. I don’t think we would have been able to pull any of it off without the word from Gianni,’ said Caine.

Collinson persuaded Noël Coward to take the role of Mr Bridger, the crime kingpin who sanctions the job from inside prison. But Coward couldn’t remember his lines. ‘He was gaga, that’s what I remember,’ said Michael Standing, who played one of the gang. ‘He got embarrassed because he couldn’t remember the lines. They cleared the set and sent everyone back to the hotel because he just couldn’t do it. They filmed him on his own.’

Over in Italy, the actors playing the thieves were each given a Fiat 500 and they drove around Turin en masse. ‘We would go out in a row,’ recalled Robert Powell. ‘And whoever was at the front at the traffic lights jammed his handbrake on, his foot on the brake, because he knew what was going to happen – all of us behind would try and push him forward into oncoming traffic. We soon discovered on a roundabout we could stop traffic from entering it by just going round and round and round.’

The traffic jams that are crucial to the film’s getaway scenes were accomplished by having members of the crew in fake police cars blocking roads and causing actual chaos while the real police, having been spoken to by Agnelli, looked the other way.

The Minis were nearly Fiats

Among the film’s classic scenes is a 15-minute car chase in which three Mini Coopers escape through the palazzos and across the rooftops of Turin. Kennedy Martin featured the Mini because ‘it really was what made the Sixties the Sixties. It was full of character, it was very British. But when I went to the British Motor Corporation [BMC] and said I want to make the Minis the centre of it they were useless’.

Eventually BMC – apparently grudgingly – sold the production six cars at trade price.

‘It was the greatest advert for Minis the world has ever seen!’ said Caine. ‘No wonder [BMC] is out of business. What a dumb load of b******* they were!’

In contrast, Agnelli could see the power of placing his product on screen and offered as many cars as were needed if the Minis could be replaced with Fiats, as well as $50,000 in cash and a top-of-the-range Ferrari as a gift for the producer. But the Minis stayed and three of them ended up racing across a flat rooftop, in real life a Fiat factory, before making a daring mid-air leap from one building to another.

By far the most audacious stunt in the film was an 80ft jump across the Turin rooftops (above). Producer Michael Deeley had a getaway car and a plane ready in case there was an accident

By far the most audacious stunt in the film was an 80ft jump across the Turin rooftops (above). Producer Michael Deeley had a getaway car and a plane ready in case there was an accident

A leap into the unknown

This was by far the most audacious stunt in the film, an 80ft jump at 75mph. If it didn’t work, people were going to die, but it wasn’t just the drivers that producer Michael Deeley was worried about. ‘I was told that I would be the one held liable if there was an accident,’ he said, ‘and would be thrown into a Turin jail. So, we arranged a getaway car and a plane, fuelled and ready at the airport. If the worst happened, I could argue my case from outside the country, rather than inside an Italian cell.’

Stuntman Remy Julienne recalled: ‘When we lifted the cars up on to the roof with a crane, the factory workers all said goodbye to us. One Italian cameraman had a nervous breakdown – he ran off in tears.’

When the stunt was successfully completed, Collinson ran up to the roof with his jacket pockets full of bottles of champagne.

But luck didn’t always go their way: second assistant camera operator David Wynn-Jones was left fighting for his life after being hit by a police car filming a sequence in which the Minis skid around a fountain on gravel, pursued by the police. After the accident, the scene was never reshot and is not in the film.

Deeley came up with the ending when the movie was going over budget and had to be brought to an end quickly. But the scene, filmed on a road north-west of Turin, caused a near riot: locals, fed up with not being able to use the road, crashed through a barrier. Police had to fire a gun in the air to stop them.

A booze-fuelled finale

The final interior scenes, with half of the coach hanging in space, anchored only by the weight of the gang at one end inside the coach, were filmed at Twickenham Studios. ‘The director, Peter Collinson, thought it would be fun to give the boys real booze,’ says David Salamone, who played one of the gang, who in the film toast their success with cans of beer. 

‘The coach was static in the studio and we were falling about like lunatics drinking beer. That scene was shot 30 or 40 times and got funnier and funnier after each take. By the end of the day, people were falling over, they couldn’t speak.’

The film opened in June 1969 to lukewarm reviews and a mediocre box-office performance. It wasn’t until its ITV debut in January 1976 that it began a slow climb to cult status by the Nineties.

‘A friend of mine brought his kids around for lunch on a Sunday,’ said Caine. ‘I opened the door and these two little boys said to me, “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” It lasts!’ 

The dynamite story behind Michael Caine’s catchphrase 

‘You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!’ 

Michael Caine’s angry exclamation is one of the most famous lines in movie history, but what not a lot of people know is that the crew filming the scene were just as shaken as Caine’s Croker. It was shot in the grounds of the Crystal Palace racetrack as Croker rehearses how to break into a gold bullion van with the help of explosives, but is stunned when the blast destroys the van. The crew believed they were safe shooting from 300ft away but found themselves surrounded by bits of flying metal. 

Production designer Disley Jones reveals: ‘He [the special effects supervisor] blew the thing to pieces! Everybody jumped a mile. No sooner had the first assistant shouted “It’s a wrap” than everybody scooted, because it blew windows out of houses and there was hell to pay. The police were screaming in and the unit was beating a retreat as quickly as possible.’ 

‘The Self Preservation Society: 50 Years Of The Italian Job’ by Matthew Field is available from Porterpress.co.uk, priced £45   

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