Director: John Huston
Producer: Arthur Hornblow Jr
Screenwriter: Ben Maddow and John Huston
Cinematographer: Harold Rosson
Music: Miklos Rozsa
Studio: MGM 1950
Main Acting: Sterling Hayden and Sam Jaffe
The caper or heist film is a very popular sub-genre of film noir. Here with John Huston’s 1950 examination of a bunch of crooks planning and then accomplishing a jewel robbery, we have one of the first of its kind. Since this movie would go on to influence so many other pictures with similar narratives, it would be criminal to understate its influence. This is a well-paced feature with a strong ensemble cast that runs for almost two hours. The A-picture running length does nothing to diminish its power. One of John Huston’s two or three best films in his long, and frankly, erratic career. It was also included in Warner Brothers Film Noir Classic Collection Volume One and is thankfully rather easy to locate and purchase.
The year 1950 was fruitful for film noir. In my humble opinion, it was probably the best year for the genre. So far in this countdown, The Asphalt Jungle has been joined by Panic In The Streets, Gun Crazy, and Where The Sidewalk Ends. Not to mention, multiple worthwhile selections that missed out of the top 50 and would have appeared if this were a top 100 list.
The Asphalt Jungle gets going with robber extraordinaire Erwin “Doc” Riedenschnieder planning to go forth with a jewel heist he’s been cooking up since his time in prison. Played wonderfully by Sam Jaffe, Doc is looking to hook up with crooked lawyer Alonzo Emmerich (Louis Calhern) to finance the proposed robbery and get the right people to execute the daring endeavor. Each member of the gang is picked depending on his special skill, like the muscle, safe-cracking, and driver. This has been borrowed by countless other films with similar storylines. The planned crime is meticulously shown in a glorious sequence where the participants assuredly take care of every last detail in order to achieve their mission. While not as elaborate as Dassin’s Rififi, these segments are the strongest in the film and have a quite intense power to them. Setting off alarms and bringing policemen to the scene (as their sirens can be heard in the background ominously approaching), the tautness gets ratcheted up a notch with every passing minute. For those that escape, the rest of the movie is a slow unraveling as we see how every crook eventually trips up and gets punished for his transgressions.
Each character is shown in minute detail as we learn about his background and what has lead them to partake in the heist. In many cases, these are desperate men looking to pick themselves out of the gutter and find some security in life. Like most noirs, there is no good or evil, black or white, our Asphalt Jungle inhabitants live in a perpetual world of grey. They are not blood-thirsty criminals, but marginalized people thrust into a world of dishonesty due to personal failures. The desperation leads to double crosses that only further exasperate their present precarious conditions. A slow journey further down a path of misery. “Are you a man or what? Trying to gyp and double cross but with no guts for it. What’s inside of you? What’s keeping you alive?” For these sympathetic individuals carving out a futile niche on skid row, each dire choice is another step into the noir void.
Miklos Rozsa’s score is another winner and credit must be given to W.R. Burnett’s novel in which Huston refrained from altering much. The cinematography of Harold Rosson is also superlative and effective during those moments where he sneakily focuses in on close-ups of the troubled criminals. His use of deep focus and stark long shots is vividly obtained. Sterling Hayden gives perhaps his best noir performance and the whole cast rises to the occasion to deliver a well-nuanced and penetrating job of breathing life into these multidimensional characters. The depth and slow development of each individual mired in the caper is astounding. The superior script does a marvelous job of making us care for each doomed member of the makeshift gang.
“One way or another, we all work for our vice.”
Hi! Maurizio Roca…
I like this review that you have written for Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle. Because you have describe the plot, the characters, and their actions very vividly.
Two points that you mentioned in your review “rings” so very true:[The Asphalt Jungle instigated the crime thriller subgenre of caper films.[1] The 1955 French film Rififi, which critics such as Leonard Maltin have labeled as the best heist film ever, drew much inspiration from The Asphalt Jungle.[6]…Information from Wikipedia]
First Of all……Maurizio Roca said, “The caper or heist film is a very popular sub-genre of film noir. Here with John Huston’s 1950 examination of a bunch of crooks planning and then accomplishing a jewel robbery, we have one of the first of its kind.
Since this movie would go on to influence so many other pictures with similar narratives, it would be criminal to understate its influence…” and
While not as elaborate as Dassin’s Rififi, these segments are the strongest in the film and have a quite intense power to them…”
Maurizio Roca said,”Each character is shown in minute detail as we learn about his background and what has lead them to partake in the heist. “In many cases, these are desperate men looking to pick themselves out of the gutter and find some security in life. Like most noirs, there is no good or evil, black or white, our Asphalt Jungle…inhabitants live in a perpetual world of grey.
I really like this comment because you have pointed-out what the film is all about and the main characters behavior in the film.
Thanks, for sharing!
DeeDee 😉
Thanks for the compliment Dee Dee. I agree that character behavior shapes The Asphalt Jungle the most. I’m also glad of your constant approval of my directness in the essays. Shaping these pieces as clear as possible is the goal. I try not to get carried away with complex word play…
Nice essay here Maurizio, of a film I like a great deal as well. I’ve always loved the opening, in the morning in a real location. Then how many of the thieves are sketched: as almost intellectual aristocrats. Just glorious, these aren’t your run of the mill hoods. They all (even the hired muscle/more blue collar in the group) have something in common, an almost nobleness in how they see themselves. Consider Hayden’s death sequence, he’s the most ‘common man’ of the criminals, he wants in on his terms. Hence why he must travel to his boyhood home so he can die there in the grass.
What a glorious film. Romantic crime and male bonding, like only Hollywood could do it.
I love your description of the film. Intellectual aristocrats as criminals, so true. They are surly people who could of been much more with a different outcome. Desperate men by chance or personal mistake.
Excellent review of this classic noir. My favorite bit has always been early on when we see Sterling Hayden eluding the police as he makes his way through the city. I love how the city is shot in this sequence. It seems like an ominous ghost town where only crooks and police inhabit its desolate streets. This powerful image sucks me in every time I watch the film.
Yes I love that scene as well J.D. Many great moments in The Asphalt Jungle we could talk about. Your personal connection shows what a love for cinema can do to enrich the soul. I also have plenty of films that do this to me. One that just popped in my head is De Niro in The Deer Hunter. The scene where he comes in contact with the deer after the war but fires into the air, unable to take the animal’s life…. beautiful.
I never found this film, to be as superlative as THE KILLING, and it has much to do with the emotional connection to these nonetheless fascinating characters. In trying to find a critical assessment that I can fully stand with, I reference here Danny Peary in his celebrated GUIDE FOR THE FILM FANATIC, where he makes claim that the film’s reputation has diminished. Says Peary:
“The reputation of John Huston’s seminal heist film, which he and Ben Maddow adapted from W.R. Burnett’s novel, has diminished somewhat. Because Huston strove for realism, he deglamorized the characters involved in the crime: the result is that we find the characters and their story interesting, but we don’t feel empathy for any of them. Ironically, the success of the heist is of paramount importance only to the most respectable participant, Calhern- the piece’s villain–so we don’t particularly care if the heist fails as we do in a film like THE KILLING, where all the thieves (whom we have sympathy for) desperately need money to have a chance for a happy life. In this film we care only for the women who suffer because of their men’s foolish endeavors.”
Peary does go on to praise the “uniformly excellent acting” and the picture “building a convincing case for their being persuasive corruption on ever level of society including the police (but then he says, “spoils it, when in the film’s worst scene, Police Chief John McIntire lectures the press about how 99% of cops are honest, and they’re out on the streets 24 hours a day protecting the public.) Adds Peary: “One of the picture’s best scenes though, has Jaffe explaining the details of his proposed crime and revelaing the budget–it’s almost like a producer trying to see a script to a studio.”
There is certainly enough greatness in this film (and it’s a dazzling entertainment) to warrant a dismissal of these charges, and I think Maurizio’s excellent essay makes a stellar argument for the yay-sayers, which I am mostly behind.
Yes, Rosza’s score is superlative too!
Yeah, I have little use for Peary’s review especially when he champions a film in it’s place chiefly for the characters who have weight because they “desperately need money to have a chance for a happy life.”
There’s a BS capitalist motto if I’ve ever heard one.
Sam I don’t think The Asphalt Jungle has diminished one iota through the years. A ***** star film all the way for me. I am totally connected with the characters and actually think the film did a good job conveying their failures. The emotional connection is present for me (though I can also love a film without such an attachment) and Huston created his third masterpiece with this heist/noir film. I have the same reservations with Peary’s critique as Jamie. A rather shallow reason for the reviewer to prop one picture over the other.
Maurizio: I am really nowhere near Peary is summary judgement. I don’t mean to give the wrong impression here. I still like THE KILLING more, but THE ASPHALT JUNGLE is still a classic, and one of noir’s most revered entries.
Yeah Sam I knew what you meant. Liking The Killing more is understandable. I just disagree with why Peary placed one over the other.
I actually disagree with Peary here; I don’t think one has more sympathy for the characters in The Killing than Asphalt Jungle, quite the opposite – and while the characters in the former film might have more personally at stake in the heist, the ones in the latter come off as more desperate, closer to the ground, more pitiable (though not pitiful, as they’re all – except for Calhern and that guy who snitches – strong in their own ways). I don’t think Killing is as shallow as some make it out to be, but it is definitely not a film as humanist as Asphalt Jungle.
I actually prefer The Asphalt Jungle to The Killing. Great essay, Maurizio.
Oh easily. I’ve never thought ‘The Killing’ all that great. Like ‘Memento’ you’re meant to be impressed with the narrative dynamics then you realize there’s little else to the film.
I rather not get into specifics about what both of you say here, but I strongly disagree with the idea that Memento and The Killing have little else to say other than narrative dynamics/structure. I hear so many people complain about Memento in this regard… the whole essence of why film noir is important to me (and many others) is questioned and explored in the Nolan film. There is so much depth that goes beyond the structure in that picture that I can’t believe people are blinded by only how the story is laid out. The richer existential questioning of how time shapes our certainty and memories make us who we are is rendered perfectly. When one loses his grip on certain basic human functions we realize that the reality we think we have a grip on is actually fragile and tenuous at best.
I certainly was expecting, or to be more correct, hoping, that Asphalt Jungle would feature not just in your Top 10, but maybe even in your Top 5. This superb movie by John Huston doesn’t just remain one of my favourite film noirs, but also one of my favourite films in general.
Your exceptional review does complete justice to the movie. Everything about it – its fatalism, script, acting, photography, score, narrative pacing, were superb. And yeah, it certainly has been a source of inspiration for many, including another superb noir – Kubrick’s The Killing.
and the lineup sequence is lifted to a tee in Melville’s LE SAMOURAI.
Shubs I love so many film noirs that 16 is a huge placement. Trust me there is little difference between 5 and 16. From 32 on we are talking about some of my favorite films ever. Glad to see you are one noir fan who does not pit one major heist film over the other.
Hard to choose between Asphalt Jungle and The Killing, but I found the former to be the more emotionally moving experience because of Jaffe and Hayden’s final scenes. The Kubrick film, of course, isn’t out to move us in the same way, though that’s not a mark against it at all. Hayden is great in both films, but I suppose I’d rate Asphalt higher as a noir because the personalities have more depth.
As for Danny Peary, he’s the last person to be purveying “capitalist BS.” This is a writer who gave his Alternate Oscar for Best Picture of 1954 to Salt of the Earth just to spite Elia Kazan. His comment in re The Killing reads like a clumsy way of registering his sympathy for poor people.
BTW, I’ve read the source novel for The Killing, but it seems as if W.R. Burnett is hard to find in print or libraries these days. Given his importance in genre history, his absence from contemporary print culture baffles me.
“His comment in re The Killing reads like a clumsy way of registering his sympathy for poor people.”
You make an interesting point Samuel. It might just be clumsy writing.
I knew that no matter what… The Killing and The Asphalt Jungle would be joined by the hip in any discussion about either film. It is hard to talk about one without mentioning the other. I consciously (or perversely perhaps) decided to have The Killing disappear from my piece.
Nice review of a great film, crime or noir, however one categorizes it. I actually thought you might rank this in your Top 10, but #16 is pretty impressive and “Asphalt” was a big influence on Dassin’s ‘Rififi.” I’ve already placed Calhern on my Top 50 Perfomances by an Actor. Great stuff.
Mark my top ten changed about 12 times. I had The Asphalt Jungle in such a lofty position on at least two separate occasions (once at 9 and once at 10) during these passing months. The fact that it is at 16 is almost arbitrary. Ask me again in two months and it might be at number one!!! The Asphalt Jungle is a core masterpiece/example of classic film noir. In the end that is the most important distinction to be made.
Maurizio, that’s a very fine film and your enthusiasm for it is palpable and effectively expressed.
I find so fascinating that the Jaffe character is a crime maven or systems buff, who really doesn’t expect to beat the system but enormously enjoys the process. And his habit requires using hapless others who have deeper hopes and more to lose, and get burned in the process.
Your take on Jaffe is spot on Jim. He truly does enjoy the process more than anything else.
Good summary and critique Maurizio. Asphalt Jungle is an uncharacteristic film for Huston, one of my favorite directors. None of the quirkiness of Maltese Falcon or Beat The Devil, and none of the usual Huston “troupe” are featured…also no larger than life characters like Charley Allnut, or Sam Spade. From his first movie The Maltese Falcon to his final one The Dead the man there is nothing like Asphalt Jungle…the realism, the mere mention of drug addicted hooligans and the employment of the word “rape” must have seemed quite heavy duty in 1950…it was a brave film by a great artist
One thing, all the praise I heap upon it notwithstanding, it’s a bit lower on my list of favorite Huston flicks than yours apparently. I believe I admire The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The African Queen, Fat City, and The Man Who Would Be King just a fraction of an inch more…but in the context of noir only “Falcon” tops it.
God I hate The African Queen. Well hate is a strong word and perhaps I should use something less powerful like ho hum. Regardless I’m not a big fan of that one. Your description of Asphalt Jungle is on the money and I agree. Good to know you are a Huston fan as I am one as well. He had an erratic career, but his best films can stand alongside anyone. His pinnacle works are magical…
Can’t stand this prosaic film with its ugly people. About as involving as a police procedural with voice-over. (Though not as good as T-Men.) That German accent made me want to throw things. Way over-rated. Seminal shmeminal. This mold’s moldy. Riffiffi’s infintely better. Belongs in the top 100 noir though, I suppose.
Gimme Raw Deal any day. Now that film has poetry. Where are films like The Narrow Margin, Too Late for Tears, The Strange loves of Martha Ivers, White Heat, Crime Wave, Side Street or Pursued? Surely they are more noir than anything Welles directed.
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