The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
One after another, the criminals in this metaphoric Asphalt Jungle meet their necessary demise. It isn't the jewel heist, functional and classic, that matters. It's the personalities that wind themselves up and then wind back down through the raspy knot where they intersect, and where they fall to unexpected side effects.
What do we make of the clichés here? The mastermind of the heist is not such a bad guy, the getaway driver is a sweetie who loves cats, the safecracker has a wife and young baby, the "hooligan" is a misplaced sentimentalist who only wants the old farm his family lost to bigger forces. In fact, these "bad guys" are really just you and me, and bigger forces are always out there ready to squash us. So conniving a little jewel theft is not going to hurt a soul, and the presumed victory over inconsequence is huge.
Or would have been. Maybe it's not coincidence that the biggest impediment of all comes mostly from a duplicitous lawyer, and here we have a character actor, Louis Calhern, sharpened and amplified by director John Huston, a master at making the ordinary just acceptably larger than life. So the man has a cash flow problem, and his suffering and his hapless conniving is alone enough to recommend the film. The small, sad part of his wife, played by the ruefully cheerful Dorothy Tree, only twists the knife, reminding him, and us, of what this man could have had, ordinary happiness. But no one in the movie wants to be ordinary, Calhern has a young Marilyn Monroe, no less, for his diversion.
Then there are the core contract players in the gang, including a sweaty Marc Lawrence as the fumbling lynchpin connecting them all. As the requisite hooligan, Sterling Hayden is convincing enough, but maybe it is the pathetic desperation of his sometimes girlfriend, played by Jean Hagen, that rips your heart out. At least until Hayden falls in the grass and the horses come to graze by his head, as if we have entered a dream, a thousand miles from from any asphalt or jungle, far far from tension and sorrow of any kind.
Considered a major film noir, it can also be seen as a major ensemble heist film. Though the gloom is noir enough, it lacks what I think of as the core quality of noir--alienation-- though there is, at least, Hayden's sad listlessness. But it's a great movie with a plot that is useful for bringing out the vivid characters. Everyone talks about how the cast is perfect, and the cast really is perfect. And the cast is perfectly directed, which is a whole other wonder.
One after another, the criminals in this metaphoric Asphalt Jungle meet their necessary demise. It isn't the jewel heist, functional and classic, that matters. It's the personalities that wind themselves up and then wind back down through the raspy knot where they intersect, and where they fall to unexpected side effects.
What do we make of the clichés here? The mastermind of the heist is not such a bad guy, the getaway driver is a sweetie who loves cats, the safecracker has a wife and young baby, the "hooligan" is a misplaced sentimentalist who only wants the old farm his family lost to bigger forces. In fact, these "bad guys" are really just you and me, and bigger forces are always out there ready to squash us. So conniving a little jewel theft is not going to hurt a soul, and the presumed victory over inconsequence is huge.
Or would have been. Maybe it's not coincidence that the biggest impediment of all comes mostly from a duplicitous lawyer, and here we have a character actor, Louis Calhern, sharpened and amplified by director John Huston, a master at making the ordinary just acceptably larger than life. So the man has a cash flow problem, and his suffering and his hapless conniving is alone enough to recommend the film. The small, sad part of his wife, played by the ruefully cheerful Dorothy Tree, only twists the knife, reminding him, and us, of what this man could have had, ordinary happiness. But no one in the movie wants to be ordinary, Calhern has a young Marilyn Monroe, no less, for his diversion.
Then there are the core contract players in the gang, including a sweaty Marc Lawrence as the fumbling lynchpin connecting them all. As the requisite hooligan, Sterling Hayden is convincing enough, but maybe it is the pathetic desperation of his sometimes girlfriend, played by Jean Hagen, that rips your heart out. At least until Hayden falls in the grass and the horses come to graze by his head, as if we have entered a dream, a thousand miles from from any asphalt or jungle, far far from tension and sorrow of any kind.
Considered a major film noir, it can also be seen as a major ensemble heist film. Though the gloom is noir enough, it lacks what I think of as the core quality of noir--alienation-- though there is, at least, Hayden's sad listlessness. But it's a great movie with a plot that is useful for bringing out the vivid characters. Everyone talks about how the cast is perfect, and the cast really is perfect. And the cast is perfectly directed, which is a whole other wonder.