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The Asphalt Jungle [1950]
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|  | The problem with todays crime movies is that so many of them talk the talk but dont walk the walk.
John Houston's 1953 heist movie puts them all to shame, simply because it understands what makes career criminals tick, and it manages to combine street style with character substance. On one level there is the plan, the operation and the betrayal that inevitably follows. But beneath this we are given glimpses into the domestic lives, impossible dreams and personality flaws of the heavy, the safecracker, the mastermind, the getaway driver, the financier- character types transformed into real flesh and blood. Brilliant.
| | | ...in this film about a jewel heist in the Mid West of the USA. Sterling Hayden's tough guy role would have been the lead then, though Marilyn Monroe is now billed ahead of him, even though it was one of her earlier parts and a smallish one at that, as the "teen" (? she looks about 20) girlfriend of crooked attorney Mr. Emrich. In fact, young girls seem to be the order of the day as elderly master criminal Sam Jaffe gets caught in the end because he wastes a few minutes watching the semi-erotic dancing of an even younger teenage girl in a diner. Well, so I'm not complaining!
As the Amazon synopsis indicates, Rank made a lavish and watchable later (though still black and white-- a bad mistake with such an exotic location) attempt to all but copy the plot in the 1963 film Cairo (with George Sanders as the mastermind, also eventually caught while watching a great bellydance somewhere by the Nile). Even the injured gunman antihero copies Hayden's doomed last journey to his home farm, though in the film Cairo the farm is somewhere south of the city, by the Nile, Cairo the film having been filmed on location.
Still well worth watching is this heist classic, which never bores.
| | | This is a bit of a gem in terms of heist films. Whether or not it really invented the genre is not important. What is worth considering is that it has a really good set of characters that intertwine fabulously in a rather good plot. Rather than spoil the film by explaining everyone and thing, lets just say that the heist itself is nearly flawless. Then there is the inevitable double cross - but by whom you ask? Lets say its very much a source of the Ocean's 12 type of game. Nevertheless, the acting underpins a good old-fashioned storyline, where you actually have to watch and listen (and not switch off!)
Film noir, not in its truest sense, but yes its nearly there - certainly adding more to it than just tension.
I stumbled on this, didn't know much about it, but ended up liking it. It only gets 4 stars, because the transfer to DVD is a bit shoddy. Worth watching though.
| | | Claims that this film 'invented' the caper movie may seem excessive, since this wasn't the first time a heist had been depicted from the crooks' point of view. But what made The Asphalt Jungle so fresh was the sympathy and sensitivity with which it characterised its 'crooked' heroes.
One of the studio heads (Louis B. Mayer, I think) famously said he 'wouldn't cross the road to see that Asphalt Pavement thing' because it was about 'ugly people doing ugly things'. In fact, the criminals in John Huston's film are far less 'ugly' than the ones contemporary audiences were used to, and this may in fact have been what Mayer found so discomfiting about the experience.
As Louis Calhern's crooked banker says when trying to soothe his wife's fears about the criminals with whom he associates, 'they're not so different really - after all, crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavour'. The moment sums up the film's outlook, and Huston delights in juxtaposing the single-minded prejudice and condemnation of the 'good citizens' in the film with the essential decentness of his three-dimensional protagonists.
Huston is sometimes credited with making the first 'true' film noir, The Maltese Falcon. With The Asphalt Jungle, he gave the Noir genre more depth and sophistication and sheer human feeling than had even its greatest exponents (Wilder, Tourneur, Huston himself, etc) during the 1940s. And the impression stuck: The Killing and Rififi spring most readily to mind as direct imitations of The Asphalt Jungle.
This is as beautifully photographed, written, acted and directed a crime film as you will ever see, and why there aren't already a hundred gushing reviews for it on this page I really don't know. You need to see it.
| | "We all work for our vices." | |
| | Once a key part of the mighty battle between Louis B. Mayer and head of production Dore Schary for creative control at MGM, John Huston's classic 1950 heist movie The Asphalt Jungle is good - very good - but at times it feels like it would have benefited from a lower budget and a tighter running time. Even though it was a comparatively low budget picture for the studio there's still a feeling that it's a film about people with no money made by people with rather a lot of it even if it was part of a conscious move by the studio to tackle grittier subject matter to compete with television. But then, with a track record that included Little Caesar, Scarface and High Sierra, the screen rights to W. R. Burnett's novel were never likely to go to one of the more cash-strapped studios that churned out film noir thrillers for their bread-and-butter.
It's that old favorite, the perfect heist that goes wrong, not because of bad luck or any overlooked detail but because of the inherent character flaws of the men carrying it out: for Sam Jaffe's meticulous and brilliant planner Doc Riedenschneider, it's very young girls ("We all work for our vices"), for Louis Calhern's crooked lawyer it's his belief that he can talk his way in and out of anything, for Marc Lawrence's bookie it's his desire to be seen as the equal of more socially `legitimate' criminals and for Sterling Hayden's not-too-bright hooligan it's his exaggerated sense of his own honor. Although executed with skill, most of the film's pleasures come from the performances, not least Jaffe's uncharacteristic Teutonic precision that earned him an Oscar nomination and Louis Calhern's free-spending but bankrupt criminal lawyer who simply regards crime as "a left-handed form of human endeavor" and who gets much of the best dialogue. But the supporting cast is memorable too, from Jean Hagen's hooker in love with Hayden, eager to please but living on her nerves in a performance completely devoid of vanity, Marc Lawrence's sweaty bookie and James Whitmore's cat-loving but tough-as-nails hunchback barkeep to Brad Dexter's unscrupulous private eye trying to cut himself into the deal, while Dorothy Tree's neglected wife puts a lifetime of desperation to recapture old times in her two scenes. Definitely worthwhile, though it doesn't leave as lasting an impression as many a cheaper film noir. Incidentally, someone really should tell whoever wrote the sleeve blurb for WHV's DVD release what `gunsel' really means...
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