Build a movie plot around this: What artist's painting is Simon holding? "Van Gogh"
Paris, 1966...Monsieur Charles Bonnet (Hugh Griffin), the current head of the Bonnet family, custodian of the family's legendary collection of fine art, and a noted collector in his own right, is offering one of his prized paintings at auction. A Cezanne, it sells for a fabulous $515,000, the high point of the auction. When Bonnet's daughter, Nicole (Audrey Hepburn), hears the news on her car radio on her way home from work, she is shocked...and dismayed. The moment she arrives at their elegant old chateau, she runs upstairs calling her father. In his bedroom on the second floor, she opens the door to an antique wardrobe and steps inside, opens a false panel at the back of the wardrobe and climbs a hidden spiral staircase to her father's secret studio in the attic.Bonnet, it turns out, is a forger of fine art...cheerful and charming, but an unrepentant scoundrel. He is putting the finishing touches on his latest project, a flawless rendition of a famous lost Van Gogh. He has even found another painting from the same period, by an unknown artist, and has brushed dirt from the back of that canvas to transfer to his forgery. "I doubt if even Van Gogh himself would have gone to such pains with his work," he boasts. "He didn't have to, Papa," Nicole retorts, "he WAS Van Gogh!" She tells him in a tired voice (for what must surely be the thousandth time) that it's a crime to sell fake masterpieces. He replies that he only sells them to wealthy, private buyers, who get an undeniably fine painting in return.A noise in the driveway sends them both to the window: An armored car, a police van, a black limousine and half a dozen motorcycles have arrived and parked in front of the house. Nicole is terrified that the authorities have at last discovered Bonnet's hobby, but Bonnet explains that he has simply agreed to let the Claver-Lafayette Museum display their exquisite statuette of Venus, purportedly carved by 16th Century sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, in their latest exhibit. Nicole is not reassured: Their Cellini Venus is...