The lure of jewels has always inspired stories of fame and fortune, tales of daring, bravado and crime. Some of the twentieth century's most ambitious films are stories of jewel heists ï¾– thankfully completely fictional, but very exciting. Gems have shaped our culture through our shared experience of film as well as the dazzlers we wear ourselves. Here we'll go through some of the most iconic tales, in chronological order. Stories about jewel heists abound and while we certainly don't condone the idea, we can't help but provide them for your reading pleasure.
Asphalt Jungle is the quintessential American heist movie, against which all others are forever judged. A 1950 film noir directed by John Huston, this classic includes performances by Sterling Hayden and Marilyn Monroe before she was famous. With the tagline "The City Under the City"", this film takes place in an unnamed urban jungle, where a major heist goes off as planned until bad luck and double crosses cause everything to unravel. Legendary burglar Doc Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe) is recently paroled from prison. With funding from Lon Emmerich (Louis Calhern), he gathers a group of veteran criminals together for a big heist. Safecracker Louis, driver Gus, and strong-arm Dix Handley manage to confidently carry out their well-planned crime: the safecracker climbs down through a manhole, pounds his way through a brick wall, climbs basement stairs to the jewelry store, deactivates the door's alarm and lets the other thieves in. They set off a charge in the jewelry store's safe, making off with the jewels even after a wounding encounter with a security guard. A corrupt cop finds out about the crime, beats the bookie that had acted as a go-between into confessing, and from that point on the gang falls apart."
While the heist sequence in Asphalt Jungle takes eleven minutes, the robbery in the landmark film Rififi ï¾– released five years later ï¾– takes thirty-three minutes of screen time, all tense thirty-three of which are silent ï¾– no dialogue, no music. The director, Jules Dassin, made memorable noirs like Naked City and Brute Force in the U.S., but was driven out of the United States during the years of the House of Un-American Activities Committee hearings. Rififi was his second film produced in Europe and he won Best Director for it at Cannes. Rififi tells the story of the planning and execution of a seemingly impossible nighttime robbery at an upscale English jewelry shop. The heist is filmed intricately and realistically ï¾– so much so that the Paris police briefly banned the movie because they feared it was an instructional guide ï¾– but in any case it goes off seamlessly in the film, and just as the gang begins to celebrate, a rival gangster decides he wants a cut of the take. The first gang refuses to cooperate, and ï¾– again, according to the conventions of the film noir ï¾– everything falls apart.
On a more comedic note, The Pink Panther appeared in 1963, the first in a series of caper movies that saw its most recent installment in 2006, starring Steve Martin. This first film starred Peter Sellers as Inspector Clousseau, a French police detective on the lookout for The Phantom, a jewel thief whose trademark is a glove left at the various scenes of his crimes. The Phantom attempts to steal Princess Dala's Pink Panther 
diamond, the largest stone in the world and one that had a panther-shaped flaw at its center. With David Niven as Sir Charles Lytton and Christopher Plummer as a jet-setting playboy, one of whom is the thief!
An update of Rififi, Giuliano Montaldo's Grand Slam of 1968 is an entertaining caper flick shot in Europe, New York, and Brazil. The adventure begins in Rio, where a schoolteacher played by Edward G. Robinson decides to steal a bunch of diamonds he sees being delivered to the gem company across the street from his class. He travels to New York to enlist the help of a crime boss and old friend played by Adolfo Celi, who gathers together an outlaw group. They all head back to Rio to enact their plan during Carnival, but the gem company has just installed an almost impenetrable new security system called Grand Slam 70. Soon, the secretary at the gem place gets suspicious and this sixties adventure comes to a twisting halt in Romeï¾…
Finally, The Hot Rock of1972 is a terrific comedy and is known in England as How to Steal a Diamond in Four Uneasy Lessons. The stone in question is in a heavily guarded museum and is a giant, valuable gem of great significance to the people of Africa, apparently stolen during colonial raids. The jewel evades all of the schemes of all of the cat burglars hired to re-steal the stone, in a classic cat and mouse game with hilarious twists and turns. Robert Redford plays Dortmunder, the man hired by an ambassador from Africa to get the diamond, and George Segal plays his brother-in-law, also in on the scheme.
What's fascinating about all these pictures is that no matter how professional the team of men employed to do the job, they're doomed to failure: in fiction no one gets away with these sort of capers. The gems are always just out of reach and always make their way back to the right hands on the right side of the law.
