Posted by Don Malcolm
on 10/5/2009, 1:46 pm
98.171.179.25 | Message modified by user Don Malcolm 10/5/2009, 4:28 pm
NOIR OF THE WEEK (10/5/09)
THIEVES’ HIGHWAY (1949)
Director: Jules Dassin
Screenplay: A.I. Bezzerides from his novel Thieves’ Market
Cinematographer: Norbert Brodine
Lead actors: Richard Conte, Lee J. Cobb, Valentina Cortese
Supporting actors: Millard Mitchell, Jack Oakie, Joseph Pevney, Barbara Lawrence, Morris Carnovsky, Tamara Shayne, Hope Emerson
[ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE: Looking over the first hundred or so of the NOTWs, it’s clear that many to most of them have been lost to us. For example, the original review of “Thieves’ Highway,” written by Steve-O, is no longer available at his “Noir of the Week” site, having been replaced by a more recent essay. That's why I'm initiating an effort to "re-do" some of the earlier NOTWs with this post.
In the next week or two, when time permits, I’ll create a new NOTW by Year list that specifies which of the earlier NOTWs that are lost to us are eligible for a “fresh look.” That should open up some territory for our NOTW team.]
Some quotes from other reviewers’ impressions of THIEVES’ HIGHWAY:
“…the film should not be mistaken for a simple political morality play. Dassin may have been a socialist—something that would lead to his blacklisting only three years after this film—but he was a man of the theater first, and the film maintains a dramatic urgency throughout. Richard Conte does not experience an intensely personal crisis like Brando’s in On the Waterfront (for which Thieves’ Highway is an obvious template, down to the identical casting of the antagonist), but his plight is one in which we are genuinely invested. Thieves Highway is not quite a great picture, but it is an example of the near-perfect combination of entertainment and social concern that was mastered in the 40s, became overripe in the 50s, and is almost never even attempted today.”
--Nathan Williams, BEING THERE (beingtheremag.com)
“This is not just a drama about the lengths a man will go to in order to get revenge, it’s about capitalism as blood sport. Practically everyone in Thieves’ Highway is a chiseller or operator to some degree, from Ed trying to cheat a poor farmer on his apples, to Polly’s nakedly mercenary attachment to Nick, to Figlia’s relentless scheming and haggling. There’s little room for love, though plenty for badinage, as with the introduction of Rica (Valentina Cortese), the Italian hooker who entices Nick back to her flophouse room (being paid to do so by Figlia) and whom Nick tells, “You look like chipped glass.” Even in a cast as effortlessly talented (and little-known today) as this, Cortese stands out. Jaggedly beautiful and yet possessed of a warm wit, she fluctuates from animal seduction to cozy repartee in the blink of an eye. ‘Soft hands,’ Nick tells her. ‘Sharp nails,’ she replies.”
--Chris Barsanti, FILMCRITIC (filmcritic.com)
“Thieves' Highway was shot by Norbert Brodine, a prolific cinematographer who began his career in the late teens. He had shot several noir thrillers before, including Henry Hathaway's The House on 92nd Street (1945) and Kiss of Death (1947), as well as Elia Kazan's Boomerang! (1947). Working with Dassin allowed him to extend his imagery out of stagebound sets and into actual locations, which benefits the film immensely. They turn the teaming produce market in San Francisco, which is not the first thing one would think of when listing threatening environments, into a literal den of thieves that oozes malice and corruption. Some of the film's most striking scenes, though, are on the California highways, particularly a desolate shot of an overturned truck that has crashed down a hill, leaving a trail of thousands of apples that look like corpses on a battlefield.”
--James Kendrick, QNETWORK (qnetwork.com)
“The journey is a speedometer-flashing light montage a la Warners, where A.I. Bezzerides' plot first materialized in Raoul Walsh's hands; Jules Dassin's version is a far less boisterous drive by night, the director's previous softness dried up by the tightly roped milieu. A tire blows out along the way, and Conte reaches for the jack only to end face down in the sand with the weight of the truck resting on his neck, until Mitchell comes to the rescue -- flawless framing and no music, just the whoosh of gypsy vehicles on a darkened roadside as the men massage the wound. The big city brings moral shadows, the system as an open market where free enterprise is often conducted with an axe; the most provocative free agent is Italian hooker Valentina Cortese, "chipped glass" to a sleepy Conte in the hotel room yet proud of it, the immigrant clawing for her share in a hustling America. Per Bezzerides' visceral prole sympathies, the nation is defined in terms of angling transactions ("You're not a good businessman" is the ultimate diss), and, fittingly, Dassin references Russian cinema -- the brakeless descent that sends Mitchell's vehicle spilling off the road is Eisensteinian montage, capped by a hill covered with rolling apples and a flaming auto carcass in the foreground, a Dovzhenko punchline.”
--Fernando F. Croce, CINEPASSION (cinepassion.org)
“This film was a huge influence on David Lynch when he was studying film at AFI and you'll find references to it in every film he's made since then -- The grinding gears in Eraserhead, the downtown soundscapes of that film, Dune and The Elephant Man, orchard visuals in The Straight Story, and most directly Isabella Rossellini reprising Valentina Cortese in Blue Velvet.
I'd go so far as to say Blue Velvet is a scene-for-scene crib of Thieves Highway in theme and all its major details, with Dennis Hopper as Lee J. Cobb. Conte's legless father is mirrored in Jeffrey's stroke-ridden father. Both come back from independent lives of young adulthood to help their struggling families in a stultifying world of greed. Both have the corn-fed woman they love and the Italian demoiselle they sleep with. Both find their lives endangered by a corrupt crime boss.”
--Janus Weathervane, from the user comments at IMDB
For some excellent screen captures from the film, go to the following link:
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews19/thieves_highway_dvd_review.htm
PERHAPS the biggest question about Thieves’ Highway is why its screenwriter, A.I. Bezzerides, didn’t get blacklisted along with director Jules Dassin. After all, Bezzerides wrote the story, providing the essential fiery proletarian viewpoint.
The quotes above cover much of the needed ground in terms of describing the impact of the film and the strategies employed by Dassin to take his thesis about the underbelly of “the American Dream” and push it beyond the comfortable limits of late-forties discourse. There’s no question that Dassin wanted to up the ante on Brute Force and make a film that spelled things out in no uncertain terms. One can almost sense a race both against time and a race against his left-wing brethren (Polonsky, Endfield, Losey) who were pushing against a society that was backing away from the more progressive tenets of the New Deal, and looking to refashion the old patriarchy by whatever means necessary.
What stands out in the film most for me, however, isn’t really this aspect, though it’s clearly front and center; it’s not the out-of-nowhere performance of Valentina Cortese, who’d never get a role close to this again, either in America or in Europe. What stands out is the singular movie-stealing of character actor Millard Mitchell. Straight from the Charles Bickford school of chiseled decay, Mitchell becomes the most multi-dimensional character in the film in less than two minutes, conveying more with a sidelong glance than most actors do with the most molar-grinding of chewed scenery.
While the Breen Office and Darryl Zanuck found a way to remove some of the teeth from Thieves’ Highway, we’re still left with the consequences of a cutthroat, dog-eat-dog world, thanks to Mitchell’s stoic grimace, and his spectacular martyrdom in one of noir’s greatest visual sequences, where he and his apples are “rolled” not by a pair of goons, but by a world that works hard at removing humanity and mutual aid from its way of life. The apples, as they as strewn across the landscape, gradually slow and stop, the symbol for the kind of cultural entropy that Dassin railed against not wisely, but too well.
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