Rhapsodies

Okay, I decided to do some 1950 heist films. Beyond the genre, which I’ve already done a few times before is that they both have Sterling Hayden in them. Since a heist film is almost by definition ensemble piece, I can’t say Hayden stars in any of them, but his charisma and presence are definitely the glue that held them together.

John Huston’s Asphalt Jungle is one of those films that I was certainly aware of, in that it’s on just about every list of film noir films. But other than that I hadn’t really heard that much about it. Of course with John Huston’s name attached I was expecting good things.

The story takes place in an unnamed Midwestern city where Erwin “Doc” Riedenschneider (played by Sam Jaffe)  has just gotten out of prison after a seven-year stint. He has a plan to rob a jewel safe worth more than a million dollars. He needs a backer to fund his plan to pay for a driver, a safecracker, and muscle (called a hooligan here. ) He finds a backer in Alonzo Emmerich (Louis Calhern) a lawyer, and soon hires the rest of his team including Louie Ciavelli (Anthony Caruso), his safecracker along with hunchbacked  diner owner Gus Minissi (James Whitmore), the only one everybody trusts, as the driver and Dix Handlly (Hayden ) as the muscle.

But Emmerich is broke and plans to betray Doc at the soonest opportunity. This along with a few other difficulties things start to fall apart pretty quickly.

This film is up to Huston’s usual high uncompromising standards. Presenting a dark setting. The cast is amazing with Jaffe as a quiet but flawed professional, and Stirling scary and uncompromisingly loyal even when things go pearshaped.

Really the only problem with it was the usual censorship of the time turning every crime film into moral propaganda. The sermon from the commissioner of police about the value of police felt tacked on especially since the film starts with him ranting about how many people have to be arrested in order to solve one crime.

After Huston, we move on to another rockstar of film, Stanly Kubrick with The Killing.

In this one Sterling Hayden plays, Johnny Clay a professional criminal who gathers together a specially picked team of insiders to rob a racetrack. On paper, it is the perfect plan and we watch the execution of the plan go together with perfect precision. But behind all of this is greed and betrayal and between this along with a little bit of bad luck, things begin to fall apart quite quickly.

Once again this is an example of an artist at the top of his game working with a fantastic ensemble team. Best performances go to Hayden as a cold methodical pro, Elisha Cook Jr. as the mousy, henpecked George Peatty whose slip of the tongue in front of his wife is the first weak link in the chain of this intricate plan.