After the downer of Period of Adjustment, cheeky ol’ Dick Van Dyke pops up next to cheer me up with 1967’s festive-themed heist comedy Fitzwilly. At least, I hoped he would, though for a film with such an interesting premise and a star as charismatic as D.V.D., this one’s a bit dull and unengaging. It does have its moments, though. Van Dyke is hard-working, loyal butler Claude Fitzwilliams - Fitzwilly to his buddies - who is hiding from his eccentric spinster boss Miss Victoria (Edith Evans) that she’s actually been bankrupt for ages. Fitzwilly and his cronies have been propping the old dear up through a series of wily scams, swindles and cons to keep the household going and to keep funding Miss Victoria’s flippant philanthropy. When new, strait-laced secretary Juliet (Barbara Feldon) is hired, this threatens to bring down the whole operation.
Though this one doesn’t totally grab me, I think we can all agree that movies about con artists and heists are always at least a little entertaining and it’s amusing to watch Fitzwilly juggling con after con to help maintain his staff in the fancy manner to which they have become accustomed. However, maybe it’s because I’m knackered today, but I can’t always follow what’s going on, or how each con is supposed to work and I do start to find it all rather suspect that we’re supposed to adore Fitzwilly though he appears to be ripping off a whole bunch of honest people. It’s not like Ocean’s Eleven, where the guys getting swindled are so obviously deserving of this punishment - Fitzwilly is gleefully fleecing antique dealers and food wholesalers, robbing Peter to pay Paul and generally just mucking a whole load of innocent people around. The film is at pains to remind us that “the only victims are the insurance companies” and that Fitz and his crew are doing the right thing because his boss donates so much to worthy causes but it's a little hard to swallow when we see them heartily chugging champagne and enjoying the other spoils of their ill-gotten gains. The morals are not very Christmassy.
Still, the story is set during the holidays with a final festive heist taking place in Gimbels department store on Christmas Eve, cleverly involving a crew of carol-singing Scouts. The film, helped along by a jaunty John Williams score, also has a freewheeling charm about it at times - this is a peak-era Dick Van Dyke film, after all. The big man is effortlessly suave, fooling around with a whole bunch of accents, even if half of them are just as bad as his dodgy Mary Poppins cockney chimney-sweep cadence.
It’s interesting that Fitzwilly’s helper Albert (John McGiver), an ex-clergyman, spends the whole film wracked with guilt about what they’ve been doing and then decides to take the rap for the whole heist as some sort of atonement. It bugs me that the film - a Christmas movie, no less - doesn’t carry any real sort of ‘crime doesn't pay’ message, making it all feel a bit off.
For a film like this, there is zero slapstick, which I find quite refreshing, though it does all end up feeling a little too dry. I find myself actually craving some crazy stunts, chases and pratfalls to liven things up a bit. All in all, Fitzwilly is strangely mundane, despite having a lot going for it.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the films I’ve encountered during my peak into the yuletide cinema of yesteryear. It’s too easy to forget that there have been scores of spellbinding, fascinating Christmas films made long before the age of what we now regard as blockbusters. From what I’ve seen, it’s as though cinema used to have a lot more imagination and executives were more willing to take a gamble on challenging concepts for Christmas films in days gone by. I’ve encountered films dealing with PTSD, marital breakdowns, even flipping cat people. I’ve seen Santa take on martians, cat burglars and even Beelzebub himself. As this month’s leg of my Christmas quest draws to a close, it makes me wish that modern yuletide flicks would make more of an effort to show this sort of daring, diversity and eclecticism.
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