Robbery (1985 film)

Production

It filmed July to August 1985. Thornhill later claimed the film was extremely successful internationally.

It was made for 2/6 - that was at a time when you could get much more interesting projects through the television system here than you can now. I'm pleased with Robbery. It's a film noir that people didn't understand here as a film noir. Its basic theme is the revenge of the underclass and what the French would call the Petit Bourgeoisie, and what we might here call the lower middle class who are led by a disgruntled leader. It's a kind of revenge film noir thing, and because it's in 4 to 3, 133 to 1, it's made for television and that means the framing's exactly right. So I think it stands up rather well, actually. It doesn't get shown much here. It does overseas. It's continually playing on cable systems in France and England. The French dubbing is fantastic. In French voices it's all that spivvy, mock ironic spivvy lower middle class petit bourgeoisie stuff, while the officers have Ecole Nationale-type voices. It even actually went out on video in the States. I like it, I'm not ashamed of it, I think it's a nice little thing. But, because here it's seen as a B-genre thing, you've just got to put up with that here, roll with the punch, not bitch about it.