If in a movie, its first-billed star, here Shirley MacLaine’s Eurasian girl Nicole Chang, is on shown right from the beginning, but is strictly deprived of any chance speaking her lines (provided it is not a mute role), and conspicuously sidelined to an expressionless doll adorned with exotic garbs, for a good 30 minutes, audience must have a hint that something is terribly amiss (apart from the unwitting connotation of rendering a woman voiceless simply at a man’s convenience).
Thus, it is the gambit of Ronald Neame’s comedic heist GAMBIT, about a cockney cat burglar Harry (Caine), who recruits Nicole to assist him in stealing a priceless statute from the Arabic magnate Shahbandar (Lom), by virtue of her uncanny resemblance with the latter’s late wife, deceased two decades ago, therefore Nicole can comport herself as a distraction while Harry carries out his daring grand larceny.
So the first half-hour during which Harry’s plan goes swimmingly well ends up to be pure figment in Harry’s head, and when their action actually takes place, nothing goes exactly as he has envisaged, mostly, Nicole proves to be an unknown quantity, instead of the mysterious, frigid, unattainable doppelgänger returning from the beyond to bewitch the clueless Shahbandar, she is a very earthy, art-savvy and romantic sort that mystique might be the last thing one could consider her of, meanwhile, Shahbandar is too worldly and crafty to fall for the quixotic charade either, already susses out the falsehood of their purported identities as Sir Harold and Lady Dean, he is amusingly piqued to play along with this battle of gamesmanship.
Outstanding for its faux-sumptuous art direction (looking dated to today’s eyes though, especially the security system guarding the precious art collections), costumes (Nicole’s cheongsams are timeless knockouts!) and foley artistry (which earned the film 3 Oscar nominations), GAMBIT loses some of its zest when the lovey-dovey whiff pluming into the story, Harry loosens his stiff upper lip and the air of haunter while Nicole simply yields to the spell of a bouquet of flowers, their temperamental incompatibility is pared down, taken over by less fetching romantic heebie-jeebies. Luckily, GAMBIT still has an ace in the hole, the payoff of Harry and Shahbandar’s “who can outfox who” macho gamble is a win-win situation, or more specially, one wins (both the girl and the material profit) while the other has no apparent loss.
By today’s yardstick, Hollywood’s antediluvian, racially insensitive modus operandi of casting Caucasian actors to play ethnic characters is simply unfeasible, Lom is browned under slap but articulates clipped English all fair and square; already impersonating a geisha in Jack Cardiff’s MY GEISHA (1962), MacLaine redeems the miscast with her chipper spontaneity and a force of proaction, that strikingly counterpoises Caine’s sterling persona of dispassion and faint irritation, all in all, insofar as a vintage caper, GAMBIT can still pass as a viable escapism fare.
referential entries: Neame’s HOPSCOTCH (1980, 7.8/10); Stanley Donen’s ARABESQUE (1966, 5.9/10); Jules Dassin’s TOPKAPI (1964, 7.2/10).