The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Directed by John Huston; produced by Arthur Hornblow Jr

Just released from prison, famous and respected criminal mastermind Doc Reidenschneider (Sam Jaffe) immediately sets in motion a long-cherished plan to rob a jewellery store. For its successful execution, he needs a safe-cracker (Anthony Caruso), a driver (James Whitmore) and a strong-arm man (Sterling Hayden) - a ‘hooligan’ - as well as a stake, provided by a bookie and all-round go-between (Marc Lawrence). Lastly, he needs a fence or someone who knows a fence, a service provided by a crooked lawyer (Louis Calhern). Despite problems, the heist is carried out. But like a small crack in a wall, a simple side-effect can spread, and bring everything down.

One of the best films noir, and probably one of the earliest caper movies taken from the criminals’ point of view, The Asphalt Jungle hasn’t aged a bit. Superb acting, writing and direction combine to make a tense, exciting, entertaining picture in which the viewer rarely knows what is going to happen from one scene to the next, yet every step is logical and, dramatically, inevitable.

The screenplay, adapted by Ben Maddow and director Huston from a novel, eschews clever or memorable lines for words that are realistic and revealing. The characters are the sort the viewer can imagine meeting; they are not deep, nor are they superficial. Jaffe and Hayden’s characters are central, and the latter’s in particular is interesting. Not dumb, he nonetheless can’t fathom people; he says more than once that he “doesn’t get it”, when someone does something the motive of which is pretty obvious. Even so, the mastermind and the hooligan develop an affinity that make them a good team: their unspoken consultation, conducted with a glance, when they realise a double-cross is in the works, and their resultant co-operation in escaping, shows their unlikely sympathy of mind.

Every character in The Asphalt Jungle is well-written, from the relatively decent bookie to the hard-driven police chief (John McIntire, somewhat resembling a later generation’s Hal Holbrook). The girl (Jean Hagen) in love with the hooligan is pathetic in her devotion, and a world away from the actress’s role in Singing’ in the Rain.

Surprisingly, perhaps, most of the criminals show a high degree of loyalty to each other. This makes more sense than the constant and universal betrayals of many movies: whether from altruism, respect or the plain logic of making sure no one gives cause for someone else to inform, these thieves do have a kind of honour among themselves.

The acting carries the excellent characters from script’s page to reality. Hayden and Jaffe lead the cast, the latter revealing more through what he doesn’t say, the former in the emotions of his words. There is a good scene in which he describes the farm on which he grew up, and which he is determined to buy back: the alternation of his face numerous times between happiness and anger demonstrates how motivated the seemingly simple thug is by his feelings. Calhern turns what may have been a standard treacherous, corrupt attorney into someone almost sympathetic. His scene playing cards with the wife (Dorothy Tree) for whom he feels no affection is almost tender. Marilyn Monroe is out of place in her small part as the lawyer’s mistress; the role surely couldn’t have made anyone think bigger things were in the offing for the actress. Strother Martin has, literally, a walk-on as a suspect in a police line-up.

The direction is exactly what is needed. The robbery scene is actually pretty simple, yet tense; I kept expecting the ‘electric eye’ to set off the alarms. When what is coming is foreshadowed - the arrival of two thieves at what is really an ambush, for instance - suspense is effectively created, and surprises are well-handled.

The Asphalt Jungle has been influential on a number of directors and writers, and on other films, and a few changes in technology don’t make it irrelevant today. An expertly-crafted story of crime, avarice, betrayal and humanity never goes out of style.

 

The Harder They Fall (1956)

Directed by Mark Robson; produced by Philip Jordan

Out of money and with the years advancing, Eddie Willis (Humphrey Bogart), a respected but unemployed sports writer, takes a job with the unscrupulous promoter Nick Benko (Rod Steiger), working as a press agent to a new fighter, Toro Moreno (Mike Lane). It takes only a minute of seeing the boxer in the ring for Willis to realise that he’s been hired to propagandise a talentless sucker for the enrichment of ruthless managers.

The Harder They Fall is Bogart’s final film, and made me wish his penultimate movie, The Desparate Hours, had been his last instead. The Harder They Fall is not bad but, had it not come as Bogey’s valedictory, it would have been, I think, one of his forgotten works.

Bogart handles himself well, as he usually does, but there is nothing remarkable in his performance. He is matched with Steiger, and seeing the two of them together is like seeing two eras of Hollywood film-making, one ending, one beginning, and the newer is not the better. It doesn’t help that Steiger indulges in his trademark histrionics, though he doesn’t reach the stages of over-acting he achieved later. Certainly, he was capable of excellent performances (eg. In the Heat of the Night), and he is fittingly malevolent here. The acting styles, though, highlight changing tastes - perhaps more with actors than with audiences. The other performers acquit themselves decently but no more. Jan Sterling, as Willis’s wife, is wasted; her role had little point.

The script is good, with some memorable lines, but the story is straightforward and predictable. Willis is seduced by the sudden wealth that comes with his position: he needs “not just money, but a bank account”. The question isn’t whether he will stay on the wrong side - the viewer knows he’s too moral for that - but what will happen to make him switch, and even that question isn’t very involving.

The premise of boxing management exploiting the fighters to the umpteenth degree is an obvious one, and the audience is hit over the head with it. The promoters and contract-owners think of their boxers as lazy, stupid, worthless, and say so. There is some interest in how Bogart’s character tries to maintain his job while wringing some concessions out of managers for the people they exploit, but the means the movie uses to push its point is typically shown in one long scene in which a sports writer (Harold J Stone) with a television series shows his filmed interview with a former fighter. There is no subtlety to the screenplay.

As well, I find it hard to believe that Benko and his stable of paid fall-guys could stage twenty or more faked victories in the ring for Moreno without fight-fans catching on. Sports writers see that Moreno’s opponents are taking dives, other boxers see it; people who watch boxing devotedly must realise something is up by the powerless style of Moreno’s punching and his clumsy moves. As well, he is touted as South America’s heavyweight champion, with thirty-six knock-outs, yet no reporter investigates a claim that could be easily dismissed.

While The Harder They Fall has something to say, it says it with sledgehammer punches, instead of fancy footwork. It’s nothing very bad, but not much more than acceptable, either.

Duel (1971)

Directed by Steven Spielberg; produced by George Eckstein

Somewhere on a highway in southern California, salesman David Mann (Dennis Weaver), needing to get to an appointment, passes an old, rusty semi-trailer truck. Little does he know that the action has triggered a grudge in the truck’s driver, who then plays a sadistic contest with Mann, the ultimate aim of which is the salesman’s violent death.

Before the computer-generated graphics of Jurassic Park, before the imaginative light-show of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, even before the mechanical monster of Jaws, Steven Spielberg directed this deceptively simple road-rage version of The Most Dangerous Game, with little more technology than some automobiles, a camera or two, and a long stretch of road. It remains one of his best movies.

Originally a tv-film, Duel demonstrates how good that medium can be – when it wants to be. It helps if the collaboration of writer, director, producer and actor is nearly perfect. It was this film that put Spielberg on the celluloid map. It begins innocently enough, with a grill’s-eye view of the start of Mann’s journey; slowly, it allows the viewer to see him and get to know him. This is never done for the trucker, who remains an unseen force, little differentiated from the behemoth he drives.

This invisibility creates tension, fear and stress throughout the movie, but especially when Mann stops at a roadside diner. He thinks he has out-run the trucker, only to see the vehicle of his nightmare parked outside when he emerges from a restroom. Is one of the other patrons the psycho? That scene, seemingly at odds with the rest of the film, is in fact a hinge. It allows both Mann and the viewer to catch his breath, only to take it away again. And with the guessing game of who the enemy might be, it raises the stakes. There is a clever sequence in which Mann tries to identify the trucker by his boots, which he saw briefly at a filling station. The viewer tries to recall what the boots looked like; no doubt Mann is trying to do the same.

The action on the road is terrific. Superbly, Spielberg manages to make Mann’s predicament claustrophobic. In his car, the lanky salesman seems confined, trapped. He has few resources, and most of them are bettered by the giant truck behind him. There are no gimmicks here: sound is used sparingly (only when a train’s horn startles Mann into thinking his opponent has found him again does its utilization seem common.) Camera-work, angles and editing make the suspense of the script palpable.

The screenplay is by Richard Matheson (author of numerous The Twilight Zone episodes, including “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”). There is little dialogue, and what there is, is all to the point. The writing is in what happens.

There is no motive imparted to the trucker. We know only what his unfortunate victim knows. The question of why a perpetrator is committing his acts must occur to half the victims of crime in the world; it is a terrifying question, especially when no answer is forthcoming. That’s part of the terror in Duel. Just as frightening is the fact that the trucker sees what he is doing as a game: at one point, Mann tries to solicit help from an elderly couple in an old pick-up. The trucker scares them off; in a movie made today, he would have killed them, but he doesn’t here. This is between him and Mann. In another instance, he helps a stranded school bus, while Mann watches, as if to show his victim that other people will see his killer as perfectly nice.

Mann’s voice-over in a café may seem out of place, but is merely a continuation of the few words he speaks to himself in frustration or astonishment when he is alone. And in these thoughts, the tension is maintained, especially when Mann tries to persuade himself that his ordeal is over.

A scene that was added, purportedly to fill out running time – and, so I gather, disliked for that reason by Spielberg – is actually quite important. In a telephone call to his wife, Mann reveals that, at a party, he did not stand up to a colleague who hit on Mrs Mann. In a Hollywood-world, Stallone or Schwarzenegger would have beaten the masher up; Mann does what many would likely do in real-life: he laughs it off. Regretting this, he nonetheless shows that he is not a brave person, not a warrior. He is ordinary. This adds to the sympathy given him, but also to the realism of his predicament.

The acting is just right. Weaver, who could play heroic, sensible characters, is here someone who is hemmed in by his job, his home, his marriage; one gets the feeling he just wants to coast through life with as little trouble as possible – as many viewers might want. His actions and reactions to the movie’s events are real. Few would not feel his anguish as he pleads with whatever powers control the universe for a little more speed in his car.

The climax gives a fitting final touch to an excellent film, a film which Hitchcock could conceivably have made. And, like another cinematic heavy-weight – Orson Welles - Spielberg’s first feature is one of his best. Fortunately, this director went on to movies that were better – but not by much!

(Readers may be grateful that I didn’t enter into the psychological aspects of Mann versus machine…)