OK, it's two reels too long; there are too many back stories to be covered before the big heist gets going. And the mechanics of knocking off five gambling joints simultaneously do not bear close inspection.
But 'Ocean's 11' does not drag too badly. The snappy dialogue and party atmosphere do not detract from it as an actioner. The fascination of this lost world of macho crookery, crammed with cigarettes, liquor and dames, is a guilty pleasure for many a man unborn when Vegas was new. Clothes and architecture still look up to date, if the attitudes are not. The picture also has one of the best examples of the current fad for animated credits- Saul Bass's.
The film is often described as a Sinatra vanity project following the success of his Capitol albums. Nelson Riddle supplies the brashly jazzy background music, but Sinatra leaves the singing to Dino and is fairly democratic in distributing plotlines and witticisms to his buddies. Indeed, fans might have wished for more from him; only in the brief scene of an unsuccessful reunion attempt with wife Angie Dickinson (an honorary female member of his Clan) is there much emotion on display.
The hamming belongs to Tamiroff as the plan's mastermind, though in the second half he gives way to Cesar Romero in an ebullient turn as the poacher-turned-gamekeeper who rumbles the robbers. Romero furnishes a lift which stops the movie running out of steam before the nice final twist. Then comes the famous end-credit scene of the Eleven wandering, stunned, past the Sands... where a billboard advertises some of them as the Rat Pack in cabaret.
As with other films criticised on release for being self-indulgently in-joky. such as 'Beat the Devil', it is hard from the other side of the Sixties- Peak Self-Referentiality in Hollywood- to see why. The guys do not spend too long kidding around or talking double-dutch for each other's entertainment. Director Milestone keeps things forging ahead; tedium threatens only because there is so much script to be shot. Only the glimpses of guests in Vegas-- Maclaine, Skelton and Raft-- are irrelevant.
Apparently it was difficult for the Clansmen to get together because they were playing different venues at different times. This shows more in the lack of scenes collecting the whole ex-combat team than in performances, which mesh smoothly.
'Ocean's 11' may seem like a dinosaur of pre-PC machismo, but it has its own inhibitions. The colour bar which would have hindered Sammy Davis's character is skated over- would he have been in the wartime 82nd Airborne in the first place? And Richard Conte's cancer-- after polio, the great fear of the Fifties-- is referred to only as 'the big casino', which may link it to the story but is a euphemism.
The politics of the production are amusing. Sinatra, often embarrassed by Mob connections, was eager to sanitise the Strip by depicting it as the injured party, looted by vets with no criminal record.
In truth, as Otto Friedrich wrote in 'City of Nets', it was becoming a vision of Hell if Hell had been designed and built by New York gangsters. Its patron saint was Bugsy Siegel, whose extravagance in raising the Flamingo had led to his being wasted on the orders of a cabal of nervous investors.
By the late Fifties, though, Vegas had become an apparently orderly place to gamble mildly on vacation, frequented by black-tie bourgeois and their befurred ladies. The mass-marketing of the resort as a garish neon jungle was a few years in the future. 'Ocean's 11' commemorates this brief interlude of respectability before the wedding chapels moved in.
But 'Ocean's 11' does not drag too badly. The snappy dialogue and party atmosphere do not detract from it as an actioner. The fascination of this lost world of macho crookery, crammed with cigarettes, liquor and dames, is a guilty pleasure for many a man unborn when Vegas was new. Clothes and architecture still look up to date, if the attitudes are not. The picture also has one of the best examples of the current fad for animated credits- Saul Bass's.
The film is often described as a Sinatra vanity project following the success of his Capitol albums. Nelson Riddle supplies the brashly jazzy background music, but Sinatra leaves the singing to Dino and is fairly democratic in distributing plotlines and witticisms to his buddies. Indeed, fans might have wished for more from him; only in the brief scene of an unsuccessful reunion attempt with wife Angie Dickinson (an honorary female member of his Clan) is there much emotion on display.
The hamming belongs to Tamiroff as the plan's mastermind, though in the second half he gives way to Cesar Romero in an ebullient turn as the poacher-turned-gamekeeper who rumbles the robbers. Romero furnishes a lift which stops the movie running out of steam before the nice final twist. Then comes the famous end-credit scene of the Eleven wandering, stunned, past the Sands... where a billboard advertises some of them as the Rat Pack in cabaret.
As with other films criticised on release for being self-indulgently in-joky. such as 'Beat the Devil', it is hard from the other side of the Sixties- Peak Self-Referentiality in Hollywood- to see why. The guys do not spend too long kidding around or talking double-dutch for each other's entertainment. Director Milestone keeps things forging ahead; tedium threatens only because there is so much script to be shot. Only the glimpses of guests in Vegas-- Maclaine, Skelton and Raft-- are irrelevant.
Apparently it was difficult for the Clansmen to get together because they were playing different venues at different times. This shows more in the lack of scenes collecting the whole ex-combat team than in performances, which mesh smoothly.
'Ocean's 11' may seem like a dinosaur of pre-PC machismo, but it has its own inhibitions. The colour bar which would have hindered Sammy Davis's character is skated over- would he have been in the wartime 82nd Airborne in the first place? And Richard Conte's cancer-- after polio, the great fear of the Fifties-- is referred to only as 'the big casino', which may link it to the story but is a euphemism.
The politics of the production are amusing. Sinatra, often embarrassed by Mob connections, was eager to sanitise the Strip by depicting it as the injured party, looted by vets with no criminal record.
In truth, as Otto Friedrich wrote in 'City of Nets', it was becoming a vision of Hell if Hell had been designed and built by New York gangsters. Its patron saint was Bugsy Siegel, whose extravagance in raising the Flamingo had led to his being wasted on the orders of a cabal of nervous investors.
By the late Fifties, though, Vegas had become an apparently orderly place to gamble mildly on vacation, frequented by black-tie bourgeois and their befurred ladies. The mass-marketing of the resort as a garish neon jungle was a few years in the future. 'Ocean's 11' commemorates this brief interlude of respectability before the wedding chapels moved in.