This was one of the favorite thrillers of my childhood! By that time, I didn't even DREAM to get involved in movies, I was planning to become a writer - so, I watched it with a totally uninvolved eye. God, I did love it! The diamond stealing scene really caught my imagination - I was fascinated by the burglars' resourcefulness! I was also deeply touched by Lang's disfigurement by the mobsters hands - definitely, it was the hardest torture scene I watched in my childhood, only surpassed by Marlon Brando's beating to a bloody pulp, in Arthur Penn's "The Chase". But maybe the most important role of this movie was the fact that it made me discover Adolfo Celi, that talented "villain type" later to be found again in so many movies... Oh, and I should also add that I was strongly aroused by the erotic scenes featuring Richard Harrison, as "Arthur Lang". I kept mentioning his kissing ways, always saying: "I can't wait to kiss the same as Lang!" (Later, when I mentioned the great German classic master Fritz Lang, my mother asked me: "Is he the same as your kissing-teacher?") It's sort of sad that my mundane trivia memories are the only comments (for now) to be made about this really skillful heist-movie of the Sixties...
Review of Master Stroke
