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John Huston has an overture to showcase his grasp, grayish location work plus a relaxed surrealism (the pistol in the cash register), tough-guy jargon punctuated by the meow of the cat on the counter. A big-time jewel heist in a world of small jobs, "a ripe plum ready to fall." The German mastermind (Sam Jaffe) is fresh out of prison, the muscle is a strapping hooligan (Sterling Hayden), one dreams of escaping to Mexican beaches and the other of returning to Kentucky pastures. Bookie (Marc Lawrence), getaway driver (James Whitmore) and safecracker (Anthony Caruso), each his own shade of desperation. The backer is a crooked lawyer (Louis Calhern) who mulls over the operation while contemplating Marilyn Monroe's high heel and faces the camera for the mordant précis: "After all, crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavor." The beginning of film noir (The Maltese Falcon) then the beginning of the end, the cruel lessons of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre brought back to the city. Silence broken by a chisel piercing the bank's bricked cellar, crawling underneath the vault's electric eye, geometric preparation for the detonation of the safe. (Sirens in the night follow, "sounds like a soul in hell.") The bruiser is too thick to notice the longing of the faded stripper (Jean Hagen) by his side to the very end, a torn suicide letter is all the lawyer leaves his ailing wife (Dorothy Tree). "A man who likes his pleasures" is easily snared, so it goes with the organizer who pauses his escape for the mirage of a babe swinging around the jukebox, his wry shrug to the state troopers is also Huston's. "Figure everything down to the last detail. Then what?" The French connection is not to Rififi but to Touchez pas au Grisbi. Cinematography by Harold Rosson. With John McIntire, Barry Kelley, Teresa Celli, William Davis, Brad Dexter, John Maxwell, and Helene Stanley. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |