So began one of the worst partnerships in John Huston's career: his contract with MGM. Dore Schary believed in Huston, but Louis B. Mayer kind of hated him. It crated with Huston's next film, The Red Badge of Courage, but Huston was allowed a free hand on his first feature for the famed movie studio. Mayer didn't like the final product and ended up using the panicky reaction to test screenings on the next film to undermine Huston greatly. Huston's partnership with MGM only lasted two movies, and The Asphalt Jungle was the only one he got to see through to conclusion as he wanted.
Doc Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe) has just finished a seven-year stint in prison, picked up for an old crime right as he was planning a new one that targeted a jewelry store with a potential payout of a million dollars total. Working through Cobby (Marc Lawrence), a bookie, to meet with the wealthy defense attorney Alonzo Emmerich (Louis Calhern) to secure funding. Together, they organize a team of five including Doc, the safecracker Louis (Anthony Caruso), the getaway driver Gus (James Whitmore), and the hood Dix (Sterling Hayden). The problems with the heist begin to percolate early and often. The plan itself is fine (though the idea that there were absolutely no updates to security in seven years is, okay, whatever), but the players are all out looking for some way to make more for themselves, stemming from the opening moment of realization that the million dollars gets cut to half that, at best, once they include a fence to sell the jewels. Mostly, this is around Alonzo who lives far larger than his income would allow, including an invalid wife May (Dorothy Tree) and a blonde bombshell of a girlfriend Angela (Marilyn Monroe), and needs cash fast.
You can see all of the pieces that Huston has been playing with in sharp detail here. The gritty noir genre conventions allow him stark characterization that bring out his subtexts to the surface pretty clearly. Alonzo is like Fred Dobbs, obsessed with having more without limit. Dix is the Huston stand-in, the one who wants a simple life in the outdoors and just needs the funding to make it happen (Doc also shares some of these qualities, including a desire to go to Mexico and enjoy the company of young, Mexican women, which is why the two bond so easily). In a more normal Huston film, one of these would be rewarded, perhaps ironically, while the other punished. In a noir in the 1950s based around a heist and criminals, everyone gets punished, and the film ends up with a muted impact at the end for me.
So, the great thing about the film is the down and dirty approach to the world, up to and including the heist itself. Even without reading up on those that it influenced, it's obviously something that touched upon the French filmmakers of the fifties pretty strongly in films like Rififi or the works of Jean-Pierre Melville. It's taught, clear, and feels grounded in ways that more extravagant displays of heist antics usually aren't. It's a bravura sequence from Huston, and it's really strong.
Once things begin to fall apart afterwards, I feel like things feel more mechanical on the whole. The pieces have been laid out well in the first half, but the second half never feels like a tragic fall. Perhaps it's because so much emphasis is placed on Alonzo, essentially the antagonist of the piece, and his fall. It starts when he tries and fails to double-cross Doc and Dix to their faces, his enforcer and private investigator Bob (Brad Dexter) gets shot, and Alonzo is forced to deal with the fallout. Watching him inelegantly befuddle his way through a couple of police interrogations isn't the most compelling thing in the world. I thing I would have been more involved in the film's third act if the focus had been more on Dix.
Dix and Doc, being the Huston stand-ins, have the makings of tragic antiheroes, but there's something about how it all plays out, especially regarding Doc, that I fail to see as tragic and more just sops to the Hays Code that criminals get their just desserts by the end. Doc's end is because he spends too much time watching a young woman dance at a jukebox? There is an effort to tie Doc's downfall to his preferences, but the actual act of his capture feels so wane and thin that it loses effect. Dix's downfall is the meat of the third act, the one thing to really chew on. He gets shot and the wound slowly festers until he loses so much blood that he just collapses. That he's tied to Doll (Jean Hagen), another lost soul, feels right and where the finale of the film works best.
So, I'm only somewhat mixed on the film. The first half, the build up to the heist, is solid, character-based stuff. The heist is great. The finale is a mixed bag that doesn't, I think, fully feel natural, more of a compromise between noirish conventions, Huston's own preferences, and the Hays Office's mandates. I can see how the film as a whole appeals to noir genre fans pretty well since there's so much wonderful craft and the performances are generally quite great that from a more purely technical point of view, it does seem to stand on top of the pile. I just have some quibbles about the finale that I can't quite get around, limiting my enjoyment of the ending.
Still, it's an accomplished film. Huston shows his continued modification of his Wyler influences by bringing in more shadow-work inspired by German Expressionism. He's a strong filmmaker, and he managed something that went against the MGM house style under Louis B. Mayer. It's really not a wonder that he didn't last long under that contract.
Doc Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe) has just finished a seven-year stint in prison, picked up for an old crime right as he was planning a new one that targeted a jewelry store with a potential payout of a million dollars total. Working through Cobby (Marc Lawrence), a bookie, to meet with the wealthy defense attorney Alonzo Emmerich (Louis Calhern) to secure funding. Together, they organize a team of five including Doc, the safecracker Louis (Anthony Caruso), the getaway driver Gus (James Whitmore), and the hood Dix (Sterling Hayden). The problems with the heist begin to percolate early and often. The plan itself is fine (though the idea that there were absolutely no updates to security in seven years is, okay, whatever), but the players are all out looking for some way to make more for themselves, stemming from the opening moment of realization that the million dollars gets cut to half that, at best, once they include a fence to sell the jewels. Mostly, this is around Alonzo who lives far larger than his income would allow, including an invalid wife May (Dorothy Tree) and a blonde bombshell of a girlfriend Angela (Marilyn Monroe), and needs cash fast.
You can see all of the pieces that Huston has been playing with in sharp detail here. The gritty noir genre conventions allow him stark characterization that bring out his subtexts to the surface pretty clearly. Alonzo is like Fred Dobbs, obsessed with having more without limit. Dix is the Huston stand-in, the one who wants a simple life in the outdoors and just needs the funding to make it happen (Doc also shares some of these qualities, including a desire to go to Mexico and enjoy the company of young, Mexican women, which is why the two bond so easily). In a more normal Huston film, one of these would be rewarded, perhaps ironically, while the other punished. In a noir in the 1950s based around a heist and criminals, everyone gets punished, and the film ends up with a muted impact at the end for me.
So, the great thing about the film is the down and dirty approach to the world, up to and including the heist itself. Even without reading up on those that it influenced, it's obviously something that touched upon the French filmmakers of the fifties pretty strongly in films like Rififi or the works of Jean-Pierre Melville. It's taught, clear, and feels grounded in ways that more extravagant displays of heist antics usually aren't. It's a bravura sequence from Huston, and it's really strong.
Once things begin to fall apart afterwards, I feel like things feel more mechanical on the whole. The pieces have been laid out well in the first half, but the second half never feels like a tragic fall. Perhaps it's because so much emphasis is placed on Alonzo, essentially the antagonist of the piece, and his fall. It starts when he tries and fails to double-cross Doc and Dix to their faces, his enforcer and private investigator Bob (Brad Dexter) gets shot, and Alonzo is forced to deal with the fallout. Watching him inelegantly befuddle his way through a couple of police interrogations isn't the most compelling thing in the world. I thing I would have been more involved in the film's third act if the focus had been more on Dix.
Dix and Doc, being the Huston stand-ins, have the makings of tragic antiheroes, but there's something about how it all plays out, especially regarding Doc, that I fail to see as tragic and more just sops to the Hays Code that criminals get their just desserts by the end. Doc's end is because he spends too much time watching a young woman dance at a jukebox? There is an effort to tie Doc's downfall to his preferences, but the actual act of his capture feels so wane and thin that it loses effect. Dix's downfall is the meat of the third act, the one thing to really chew on. He gets shot and the wound slowly festers until he loses so much blood that he just collapses. That he's tied to Doll (Jean Hagen), another lost soul, feels right and where the finale of the film works best.
So, I'm only somewhat mixed on the film. The first half, the build up to the heist, is solid, character-based stuff. The heist is great. The finale is a mixed bag that doesn't, I think, fully feel natural, more of a compromise between noirish conventions, Huston's own preferences, and the Hays Office's mandates. I can see how the film as a whole appeals to noir genre fans pretty well since there's so much wonderful craft and the performances are generally quite great that from a more purely technical point of view, it does seem to stand on top of the pile. I just have some quibbles about the finale that I can't quite get around, limiting my enjoyment of the ending.
Still, it's an accomplished film. Huston shows his continued modification of his Wyler influences by bringing in more shadow-work inspired by German Expressionism. He's a strong filmmaker, and he managed something that went against the MGM house style under Louis B. Mayer. It's really not a wonder that he didn't last long under that contract.