Gambit (1966)

*SPOILERS BELOW*

Second viewing; first seen on September 26, 1992.

It is about the complex operation to steal an ancient sculpture from the house of a rich man living in an Arab country. The essential instrument used is a woman who looks like the face in the sculpture and also like the owner's dead wife.

An intelligent film, in a genre which produced many intelligent films at that particular period. There is hardly a boring moment in it. This kind of film is generally called "empty fun", but of course there is no such thing. Notice how the theme of original versus copy is beautifully developed in a dual fashion, regarding the artwork and also in the living realm (multiple women with the same characteristics). The notion of the inferiority of the copy dates back to Plato, who said that our material world is only an inferior copy of an ideal one; furthermore, he stated that Art is an inferior copy of the material world. The film works as an illustration of the first part of this thesis by a comparison between the ideal job and the real one.

Rating: 65 (down from 66)