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It Is A Jungle Out There
By Staff Writer Jim Cohn
The Asphalt Jungle
(1950)
Based on the novel The Asphalt Jungle by W.R. Burnett
Screenplay: Ben Maddow; John Huston
Director: John Huston
Cast: Sterling Hayden: Dix Handley; Louis Calhern: Alonzo D. Emmerich; Jean Hagen: Doll Conovan; James Whitmore: Gus Minissi; Sam Jaffee: Doc Erwin Riedenschneider; John McIntire: Police Commissioner Hardy; Marilyn Monroe: Angela Phinlay
Mood Noir
Largely forgotten by the general public, the writings of W.R. Burnett are cherished by aficionados of the "hard-boiled" school of crime fiction.
By age twenty-eight Burnett had penned more than a hundred short stories and five novels... all unpublished. He left a comfy civil service job to move to Chicago and hone his writing. A year later, Little Caesar hit the booksellers and its overnight success launched Burnett's career.
Hollywood beckoned and Burnett accepted. He wrote screenplays, but didn't abandon his love of the novel. Among his best known are High Sierra (Burnett adapted it for filming) and Asphalt Jungle. His original screenplays for Wake Island and The Great Escape were nominated for Academy Awards.
Many of Burnett's stories feature crooks who want to change their ways. Just one more score, they rationalize, will fulfill their quest for the quiet, simple life. But, they can't because the system Burnett presents only sees black and white, and the system brings them down. Nowhere is this theme more evident than in W.R. Burnett's Asphalt Jungle.
The Art is in the Telling
The story is a simple one: A band of petty criminals is assembled by a mastermind with an infallible plan for a million dollar jewelry store heist. But money is needed to put the plan in motion. A crooked lawyer is solicited to provide the funding, but when he double-crosses the gang, the plan falls apart.
What lifts Asphalt Jungle from the mundane and places it squarely among the most influential genre films, is the deft directing of master movie-maker John Huston. Shot in glorious black & white, Asphalt Jungle features heavy shadows, sparse settings (most of the movie seems to have been filmed in small, seedy rooms), tight close-ups of overstrained characters, with musical punctuation used sparingly.
In other words, Huston depicts a bare-to-the-bone image of the rotting underbelly of a large city-"The City Under the City," the tagline proclaims.
Huston uses brief scenes to suck us into this seedy whirlpool…and hold us there. The conclusion of each scene propels us none-too-gently into the next. Never are we allowed to become comfortable. And would we want to, in Huston's gritty world of small-time hoods and double-dealers?
Huston and Ben Maddow co-authored the screenplay, so it's not clear whether they, or Asphalt Jungle novelist Burnett, get credit for particular lines of dialogue. No matter, the best of it is as dry and as laden with its own perverse truth as a knife edge against the throat. Here's a smattering:
"Experience has taught me never to trust a policeman. Just when you think one's all right, he turns legit." Criminal Mastermind Doc Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe)
"One way or another, we all work for our vice." Riedenschneider
"Oh, there's nothing so different about them [criminals]. After all, crime is only... a left-handed form of human endeavor." Crooked lawyer Alonzo Emmerish (Louis Calhern)
"Don't bone me!" Dix Handley, menacing his bookie.
"Shut up. I didn't see anybody. How could I? I wasn't here." Crooked cop, Lt. Ditrick (Barry Kelley)
"We'll get the last one, too. In some ways he's the most dangerous of them all. A hardened killer, a hooligan. A man without human feeling or human mercy." Police Commissioner Hardy (John McIntire)
These lines, coming near the end of the movie, frame Burnett's recurring theme of criminals unable to escape a life they no longer want. The commissioner is talking to reporters about Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden), the last of the gang still free. When he finishes, the scene shifts to Dix and his girlfriend, Doll Conovan (Jean Hagen), careening down a narrow road past the horse farms near Louisville, Kentucky.
Dying from a gunshot wound, Dix is making a desperate attempt to return home-the reason he went in with Doc Riedenschneider on the jewelry heist in the first place. This is where Burnett's story brings it all together.
For we see a Dix Handley who is far from, "A man without human feeling or human mercy." Weak from blood loss he is near hallucination. As Doll listens, he mumbles, "The black's the best. He has a way of staying way out front. I sure hope Pa don't sell him. If Pa just hangs on to that black colt, everything's gonna be alright." With that, Dix stops the car, staggers into the field, and expires in the grass, sunlight streaming around him, as four of the horses he loves so dearly surround and nuzzle his lifeless body.
Does film noir get any better than this?
Burnett:
http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/engl/marling/hardboiled/Burnett.HTM
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0122446/
Jungle:
http://www.filmsite.org/asph.html
http://www.eskimo.com/~noir/ftitles/asphalt/index.shtml
http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com/movie-1001264/reviews.php
Noir:
http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html
http://members.aol.com/alainsil/noir/
Do you have comments about Jim's reviews? He'd love to hear from you. Contact him at:
ReadersRoom2@aol.com
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