Big Deal on Madonna Street

A smashing heist comedy, mainly a send-up of Rififi, about a band of incompetent layabouts and petty crooks who plan a major heist by breaking into an empty flat and drilling through to the bank vault next door. The plan goes slightly awry and leads to a hilarious twist in the tale. Made quickly and cheaply, it stars Marcello Mastroianni and Vittorio Gassman, the latter made up to hide his Latin lover image completely, and features an early performance by Claudia Cardinale. Louis Malle remade it in 1984 as Crackers; it was loosely remade again in 1995 as Palookaville.