Forgotten Fires: Native Americans and the Transient Wilderness

Triple bill of 1960s classics starring Michael Caine. In 'The Italian Job' (1969), upon leaving jail, petty criminal Charlie Croker (Michael Caine) inherits a carefully planned $4,000,000 gold robbery in Italy. With the original mastermind of the plan murdered, Croker needs financial backing and finds it in Mr Bridger (Noel Coward in his last screen role), a quintessential English crime boss still incarcerated by Her Majesty's Prison Service. Bridger supplies Charlie with his own gang of bank robbers, getaway drivers and computer whizz-kids, and helps him plan the heist (during the practice runs Caine utters the infamous phrase 'you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off'), which results in the world's biggest traffic jam. The gang's getaway in red, white and blue minis is accompanied by the tune 'Getta Bloomin Move On' (aka 'Self Preservation Society') written by Quincy Jones and George Martin. Michael Caine stars in this epic story of the battle of Rorke's Drift, on January 22nd 1879, where 1,200 British troops found themselves completely outnumbered by irate Zulu warriors in Natal, South Africa. Having already destroyed a very large British garrison, 4,000 Zulu warriors are now on their way to overcome the handful of men stationed at Rorke's Drift. The two lieutenants in charge of the garrison, Jon Chard (Stanley Baker) and Gonville Bromhead (Caine), are at odds with each other, but manage to rally the men together and put up a courageous fight. Only a few of the men survived, eleven receiving the Victoria Cross. Alfie (Michael Caine in his first starring role) is a streetwise womaniser in swinging Sixties London. His conquests are numerous, from common-law wife Gilda (Julia Foster) to frustrated housewife Lily (Vivien Merchant), but the chirpy cockney's sexual antics catch up with him faster than he had counted on. The film is now seen as a period piece of Sixties British Cinema and to show the consequences of the sexual revolution that began in that era (Alfie is not repentent about his harsh treatment of the women in his life and so never quite finds fulfilment), was nominated for 6 Academy Awards and has a soundtrack by jazz musician Sonny Rollins.