Midas Run (1969)

Taglines: He had ten million dollars in gold. Now he has it. Then she got it.

Midas Run involves an attempt to hijack an airplane carrying a gold shipment. The conspirators are Anne Heywood, lovely as always; Fred Astaire, charmingly fey; and Richard Crenna, the Spiro Agnew of leading men. They hire a former Luftwaffe pilot to force down the airplane, which he does, but not until we could care less. In the meantime, we’ve had to sit through awkward scenes of Miss Heywood and Crenna falling in love or something — scenes hard to believe, since the character played by Miss Heywood seems too intelligent to fall for Crenna, or even Troy Donahue.

There are some interesting scenes involving Sir Ralph Richardson, as the head of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but even Richardson seems to be marching through the role for the cash. A couple of other good character actors — Cesar Romero and Adolfo Celi — are likewise wasted.

Midas Run (UK title A Run on Gold) is a 1969 American comedy film directed by Alf Kjellin and starring Richard Crenna, Anne Heywood and, in one of his final big-screen roles, Fred Astaire. It was shot at the Tirrenia Studios in Tuscany. Location shooting took place in London, Venice, Milan and Rome.

Film Review for Midas Run

IN our prettily colored world of movie fantasies, where multimillion-dollar hold-ups are almost as common as sex, “Midas Run,” which landed at local theaters yesterday, is merely a mildly funny addition to a once-rich genre that is fast becoming impoverished.The principals may be chasing all over Italy for $15-million or so in gold ingots, but after years of the likes of the superb “Rififi” up to the current, standard “Seven Golden Men” bullion caper, a moviegoer can’t be blamed for thinking that money isn’t everything after all.

There’s the intricate plotting, of course, that attempts to be serious as well as comical about a romance and other characterizations, which merely indicate that the producers were not quite certain of the direction of their run for the money. In any event, Fred Astaire, serenely urbane as the highborn member of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, sets the bullion plot bubbling because he is miffed at being passed over for a knighthood.Why and how Richard Crenna, as a militantly pacifist American dismissed from his college teaching post, and that curvaceous British siren, Anne Heywood, rebounding from a bad marriage, join him in the scheme to lift that loot from a plane headed for Tanzania, strains credulity.

The ensuing dash about the pastel, picturesque countryside is unbelievable, too. But it is a convoluted business made lighthearted now and again by the energetic conspirators and their associates.The mastermind, Mr. Astaire, operating out of London where he is being chivvied, somewhat amateurishly by Roddy McDowell, his ambitious assistant, and the bumbling Sir Ralph Richardson and Maurice Denham, his superiors, is a placid, elegant type, who maintains his cool toward the plot and his scurrying colleagues.

Of course, the harried Mr. Crenna and Miss Heywood, who resent his lofty attitude, manage to bed down during an interlude in the hectic chase from the pilfered airplane to a truck, trailer, tank and fighter plane in the company of ex-German smugglers, a former Luftwaffe pilot, an erstwhile Fascist Italian general and assorted carabinieri.

But the occasional giggles they inject, particularly Adolfo Celi, as the haughty general and Karl Otto Alberty, as the ex-Luftwaffe pilot, as they all try to avoid double-crosses en route to a telegraphed happy ending, seem more manufactured than inspired. Despite its amiable, 14-karat, good intentions, this “Midas Run” contains more dross than gold.

Directed by: Alf Kjellin
Starring: Fred Astaire, Richard Crenna, Anne Heywood, Ralph Richardson, Cesar Romero, Adolfo Celi, Maurice Denham, Jacques Sernas, Carolyn De Fonseca, George Hartmann
Screenplay by: Ronald Austin, James Buchanan, Berne Giler
Cinematography by: Kenneth Higgins
Film Editing by: Fredric Steinkamp
Set Decoration by: Massimo Tavazzi
Art Direction by: Ezio Cescotti, Arthur Lawson
Music by: Elmer Bernstein
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Cinerama Releasing
Release Date: April 30, 1969