The Burglar (1957)

June 1957 release date

Directed by Paul Wendkos

Screenplay by David Goodis

Based on the novel The Burglar by David Goodis

Music by Sol Kaplan

Edited by Paul Wendkos, Herta Horn

Cinematography by Don Malkames

Dan Duryea as Nat Harbin

Jayne Mansfield as Gladden

Martha Vickers as Della

Peter Capell as Baylock

Mickey Shaughnessy as Dohmer

Stewart Bradley as Charlie

Wendell Phillips as the police captain

Bob Wilson as the newsreel narrator

Phoebe Mackay as Sister Sara

Steve Allison as the state trooper

Richard Emery as the child Nat Harbin

Andrea McLaughlin as the child Gladden

Distributed by Columbia Pictures

The Burglar, which was released almost sixty years ago, opens with newsreel footage, and one of the news stories is about the death of the millionaire Jonesworth in Philadelphia. When the camera finally moves out to show the audience, I realized that the newsreel was part of the story. And Dan Duryea, as Nat Harbin, the main character, is sitting in the audience of a movie theater, watching the newsreel, which gives him the idea for a heist. The newsreel footage was so effective that I almost believed that I was watching the wrong film! It is a great device for revealing many plot details and then tying them to the subsequent action.

The Burglar was filmed on location in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, cities that David Goodis knew well (Philadelphia was Goodis’s hometown). The opening credits are striking, with the bold use of white type and lines organizing the text. The cinematography throughout the film is beautiful, especially after Nat Harbin arrives in Atlantic City. The lighting emphasizes the unraveling of the jewelry heist and of Harbin’s plans for the future, and it emphasizes the escalating tension and suspense. The jazz score throughout is discordant. I can’t say that I would enjoy the soundtrack separate from the film, but it is well suited to the plot: a story full of despair, frustration, and loss. Everything about The Burglar qualifies it as noir.

(This blog post about The Burglar contains spoilers.)

I am emphasizing the line about spoilers in this post because I want to compare David Goodis’s screenplay to his novel The Burglar, which is the basis of the film. To do that, I will be giving away several plot points about both the film and the novel. You can read my blog post about the novel by clicking here. (You can also click on the arrow for 2016 in the left-hand column of this screen and then click on the arrow for May.)

Here is a point-by-point comparison of some of the differences that I found between the novel and the film adaptation:

• Gladden accuses Dohmer of always looking at her, always staring at her. Dohmer comes close to raping Gladden in the kitchen of the house they all share. The tension between Gladden and Dohmer is not part of the novel.

• Baylock wants Harbin to let Gladden go, to evict her from their organization. That night, Harbin dreams about his escape from an orphanage, and soon after meeting Gerald Gladden, Gladden’s father. There is no mention of an orphanage in the novel.

• The film includes dialogue in which Della explains a lot of her back story, and Harbin explains some of his story. There is little of Della’s back story in the novel, where she remains more mysterious and thus more of a femme fatale. It’s a good device in the film, however, to explain something of Harbin’s back story, too, which is told in exposition and in greater detail in the novel.

• Della, Gladden, and Harbin all die at the end of the novel. Not so in the film:

◊ Della betrays Charlie at the scene of his shooting of Harbin, and Charlie is arrested. In the novel, Charlie is shot by Gladden, and Della is choked by Charlie.

◊ Gladden lives. She is portrayed as a victim in love with Harbin. In the novel, she drowns with Nat Harbin.

◊ Harbin is killed by Charlie. In the novel, Gladden kills Charlie, and she and Harbin drown together.

◊ Charlie dies in the novel (he is shot by Gladden). In the film, he is caught with the necklace in his possession because Della calls him a liar. He is then arrested, and Harbin’s death is ruled victim of homicide.

Why do I emphasize these points? Because Goodis adapted the screenplay from his own novel, and even though the screenplay changes many of the details from the novel, the film stands as a great film noir and a suspenseful story. I enjoyed the novel more, and maybe that’s because I read it before seeing the film. The film adaptation still holds many plot twists and surprises, even for a viewer like me who read the novel and thought I knew what to expect. In my post about the novel, I said that the plot of the novel had me guessing at every turn, and I can say the same about the film version.