Features

The Italian Job (1969)
The Italian Job is a celebration of Cool Britannia the first time around, what with its King's Road flaneurs, its mum-loving 'tea leaves' and the casting coup of including three Mini Coopers for the getaway scene in Turin.

Michael Caine may have provided the mod swagger and tips on door removal, but it was the Minis that captured pugnacious, plucky Albion sticking it to Johnny Foreigner. Here's where the ironies start, of course. The climatic car chase was the work of French stuntman, Remy Julienne.

It was his sense of creative possibility that saw the Minis swaying through a sewage system and making a 60ft jump with only a truck full of polystyrene below to save them from oblivion. Then there were the incredibly accommodating Italians, what with Fiat offering up their roof-top test track and the local cabinieri helping the film crew engineer genuine gridlock in Turin.

And the famous terrace chant theme tune? That came care of American producer, Quincy Jones. But just like Caine, the cars are true Brits, and perhaps even more than all those Monte Carlo rally victories, it's The Italian Job that put the amber preserve on the Mini Cooper. And these days, no one is more thankful for that than the Germans at BMW. Guess that's the global village for you, guv.

C'etait Un Rendezvous (1976)
There's a famous quote that goes, 'If it's a choice between printing the truth and the legend, print the legend.' So what we have here is a Ferrari 275 GTB giving it the full 'zut alors' on Napoleon's old stomping ground, driven by an F1 driver who director, Claude Lelouch, refused to name, after himself being arrested by the police at the debut screening of the film.

Debunkers say that the car was in fact the director's old Merc, that the sound was dubbed on afterwards and that the whole nine-minute spectacle was entirely stage-managed, but that all rather misses the point. What we get in Rendezvous is a turbo-charged bus tour through Paris, recorded in a way that was utterly unique 30 years ago.

Thanks to a new bit of kit called a gyro-stabilising camera mount, we are ticking off the Arc de Triomphe, the Place de la Concorde and the Louvre at a pace that would make an American tourist weep with envy. In order to ensure such speeds, it was shot at a time of minimal traffic, about 5.30am.

A curious offshoot of this is to catch the city as it is rarely seen, that strange hour when late-night revellers and early-risers cross paths in the leaking light and only a few scattered vehicles sleepwalk along the Champs Elysées. For once, Paris looks genuinely romantic.