Wednesday, January 27, 2010

#84: Thieves' Highway (Jules Dassin, 1949)

Released: October 10, 1949

Director: Jules Dassin; Screenplay: A.I. Bezzerides; Cinematography: Norbert Brodine; Music: Alfred Newman; Producer: Producer: Robert Bassler; Studio: 20th Century Fox

Cast: Richard Conte (Nico “Nick” Garcos), Valentina Cortese (Rica), Lee J. Cobb (Mike Figlia), Hope Emerson (Midge), Percy Helton (Roadside Bar Manager), Barbara Lawrence (Polly Faber), Millard Mitchell (Ed Kinney), Joseph Pevney (Pete), Jack Oakie (Slob)

- “Everything happens to me. The whole street, he's gotta break down in front of my place.”

Yes, more Richard Conte. Going into this countdown, I knew that a core group of actors and actresses would emerge, popping up in almost every entry in the series. So far, it has been the Richard Conte and Edward G. Robinson Show, with both already making multiple appearances. The great thing about Conte in this era was the versatility in his acting. He could play the innocent fall guy, such as his role as the wrongly imprisoned Frank Wiecek in Call Northside 777. He could be equally believable as the ambitious reporter in The Blue Gardenia. As will become obvious with later entries in the countdown, he could portray an out-and-out villain as well as anyone else in Hollywood. In the case of Thieves’ Highway, his Nick Garcos is a genuine good guy, albeit a brash man bordering on overconfidence.

Coming home from the war, Garcos returns to the farm country of California to find that while he was away his father was crippled in a suspicious truck accident. Furious over the poverty that his family has been forced to live in due to his father’s inability to work, Garcos vows revenge on the man that he holds responsible for the accident – a shady produce dealer named Mike Figlia (Lee J. Cobb). Taking the money he saved while in the service, Nick decides to invest in a surplus troop truck and begin hauling produce, teaming up with friends and acquaintances of the family. When he and partners Ed (Millard Mitchell), Pete (Joseph Pevney) and Slob (Jack Oakie) begin hauling two loads of apples for San Francisco, they believe they are in line for a big payday. Instead, when they reach the markets, Nick is lured to the room of a beautiful temptress (Valentina Cortese) at the order of the shifty Mike Figlia. While Nick is being wooed by the woman, Figlia swoops in and sells the load of apples himself. Thus, what ensues is a tale of revenge and cutthroat business dealings, set against the backdrop of fresh food markets, an industry notorious for its corruption.


Directed by Jules Dassin and with a script by the great A.I. Bezzerides, a jaded observer could view the entire production as a leftist critique of America and the capitalist system. This would be an easy route to take, as Dassin’s troubles with the House Un-American Activities Committee are well documented and he would flee the United States entirely four years later. Bezzerides’ travails are not as well known, but he too experienced intermittent difficulty finding writing jobs because of his “leftist sympathies.” All of these points are well and fine, but I think that the critique put forth by Dassin and Bezzerides can be acknowledged by any free-thinking minds at the other end of the political spectrum. The critique is not a simple: “Capitalism is horrible!” declaration. It is instead the apt acknowledgment by a grizzled writer like Bezzerides of making it in the business world can be a truly ruthless enterprise – perhaps justifiably, perhaps not. Unfettered free enterprise can be a dangerous thing, even in something that could seem as trivial as the sale of fruit. The character of Mike Figlia is the obvious manifestation of this fact. In Nick Garcos and his partners, we see men trying to figure out how to deal with such powers. Comply? Resist? In the end, neither option seems to offer a consistent answer.

I maintain that the three key personalities of the film – Dassin, Bezzerides and Conte – would all go on to even greater heights. In the case of Dassin, he had already made superior films, and would do so again in the future. Bezzerides and Conte had all-time classics awaiting them in the years ahead. But in Thieves’ Highway, they came together to make a film to make you ponder important issues.

12 comments:

  1. Dave, I am not sure of the noir-ness of Thieves Highway. I do think it is Dassin's best American film (after The Night and the City, which was filmed in London with a UK crew), and I see it as having more affinity with the Grapes of Wrath. If included in the classic noir cycle, I would have to rank it in the top 10. It is much stronger than either Brute Force (1947) or The Naked City (1948). It should be noted also that Dassin lost out to studio bosses who imposed a 'Hollywood' ending ovee the darker ending in the original script.

    Conte is great and for me this is his best role. The supporting cast is strong, with impressive turns by Lee J. Cobb as Mike Figlia and by Valentina Cortese as the girl Rica.

    What struck me is how well each of the main characters is drawn, and how the rush to get the load of apples to the market, propels the story, and the character development. The most potent scene is when Nick is pinned under his truck after the changing of a flat tyre goes wrong, just off the busy highway, where a never-ending stream of trucks rip through the night: the world is not going to stop for one poor guy stuck under his truck.

    The atmosphere of the Frisco produce markets is rendered so convincingly, that it has a cinema verite quality. I feel qualified to say this as this is one of the very rare times, I can directly relate to what is happening on the screen. I grew up in a small corner fruit store run by my immigrant parents in a working-class suburb of Sydney – a big harbour city with a produce market at it’s center. My father is Italian and my late mother was Greek. It was a struggle and we opened 7 days a week. During school vacation my father would wake me at 4am weekdays for the trip to the city markets, where I would haul the long barrow behind him, as he moved from stall to stall haggling to find produce at a price that he could retail and make a buck. This movie connected for me deeply, and sadly your review is all the more poignant as my father passed away just last month.

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  2. This is a truly great film. I would rank it in my top 30-35 if I made such a list. I also wondered about how noir it was when I first viewed it. My conclusion is that this is definitely a borderline noir. Not sure if I would rate this above Brute Force but one thing is sure...J. Dassin was a great director!!........M.Roca

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  3. "The atmosphere of the Frisco produce markets is rendered so convincingly, that it has a cinema verite quality. I feel qualified to say this as this is one of the very rare times, I can directly relate to what is happening on the screen. I grew up in a small corner fruit store run by my immigrant parents in a working-class suburb of Sydney – a big harbour city with a produce market at it’s center. My father is Italian and my late mother was Greek. It was a struggle and we opened 7 days a week. During school vacation my father would wake me at 4am weekdays for the trip to the city markets, where I would haul the long barrow behind him, as he moved from stall to stall haggling to find produce at a price that he could retail and make a buck. This movie connected for me deeply, and sadly your review is all the more poignant as my father passed away just last month."

    Tony - This is a wonderful story. Sorry for your father and thanks for sharing the story... a great post.

    I can see your point on this being borderline noir, but as you'll notice as the countdown progresses (if it isn't already obvious), I'm using a pretty wide definition of what is noir. I'll disagree on this being Dassin's best American film, but I won't give away exactly how that will play out over the course of the rest of the countdown.

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  4. M. Roca - I agree 100% that Dassin was a great director! Don't worry, he will be heard from again.

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  5. Dave, a fantastic review! However for me I would rate this one higher, an excellent performance by Richard Conte. Lee J. Cobb is his usual strong self and Valentina Cortese is both talented and seductively alluring. As Tony says, the film has strong character development, also some excellent photography. The scenes between Cortese and Conte are potent.

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  6. This is indeed a great review, and I must concur tat Tony d'Ambra's long response is a treasure for a number of reasons. THIEVES' HIGHWAY is an excellent choice, indeed any film by Dassin is. NIGHT AND THE CITY is his masterpiece of course, but I'm sure we'll be seeing that later on in the countdown. Conte, Cortese and Cobb are all excellent and Norbort Brodine's cinematography is superlative. Alfred Newman's score is memorable too. Yeah, I would have put it higher, but your placement here is fair enough, all things considered.

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  7. Dave, there's a partial affinity between leftist critique and noir sensibility that seems more thorough than it actually is because noir hadn't as many occasions to cast its cynical gaze on the state. Whatever the political commitments of noir creators, noir itself has nothing to do with ideology, since it's against the grain of noir to idealize anything. Which is my long-winded way of saying that Thieves' Highway was no reason to blacklist anyone involved in it. I discovered the film itself through the Criterion DVD and found it a fine example of working-class noir with predictably fine work from Conte, Cobb et al. Mitchell and Oakie are character actors I appreciate more every time they show up in films.

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  8. Thanks for the compliments everyone. I figured that this would probably be low compared to where others would rank it.... just a case of personal taste again. I still obviously think it's an outstanding movie. Perhaps I dock it a bit without even realizing it by comparing it to other Dassin, Bezzerides and Conte films that I prefer.

    And Samuel, I agree with your assessment. Although, I don't know how enough about the details to say how large of a role this particular film played in the blacklisting. That would be interesting to check out...

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  9. Since some of us consider this borderline noir I was wondering about some other films. Do you guys consider The Bad and the Beautiful noir? How about All the Kings Men? I even wonder about some of the Val Lewton's films like The Seventh Victim........M.Roca

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  10. I saw it last year and quite liked it. The apple truck scene is unforgettable. And I am a Lee J. Cobb fan.

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  11. M.Roca - I think a case could be made for The Bad and the Beautiful. I would say no on All the Kings Men, but others might disagree. I haven't seen The Seventh Victim, so I can't comment.

    That's the interesting thing about noir -- there is no concrete definition. Some of my favorite films of this era aren't noirs, but have noir overtones, like A Place in the Sun for example. "Noir" is definitely in the eye of the beholder!

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  12. I would definitely consider The Seventh Victim a noir. It's as visually stylized as the Lewton/Tourneur productions, and ends in a way that is darker than most films of any time (that the movie actually got made is astonishing), and deals with the most fundamental existential dilemma (you know...to be or not to be).

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