The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

May 23, 1950, release date

Directed by John Huston

Screenplay by Ben Maddow and John Huston

Based on The Asphalt Jungle by W. R. Burnett

Cinematography by Harold Rosson

Sterling Hayden as Dix Handley

Louis Calhern as Alonzo D. Emmerich

Jean Hagen as Doll Conovan

James Whitmore as Gus Minissi

Sam Jaffe as “Doc” Erwin Riedenschneider

John McIntire as Police Commissioner Hardy

Marc Lawrence as Cobby

Barry Kelley as Lieutenant Ditrich

Anthony Caruso as Louis Ciavelli

Teresa Celli as Maria Ciavelli, Louis's wife

Marilyn Monroe as Angela Phinlay

William “Wee Willie” Davis as Timmons

Dorothy Tree as May Emmerich, Emmerich’s sickly wife

Brad Dexter as private detective Bob Brannom, Emmerich’s henchman

Helene Stanley as Jeannie

John Maxwell as Dr. Swanson

Frank Cady as the night clerk

Produced by MGM

Black-and-White Cinematography Makes “Blind Accident” Gorgeous

One of the characters in The Asphalt Jungle, Doc Riedenschneider, repeats, using a slightly different phrase, what could be said and has been said about the role of fate in film noir in general: “Blind accident. What can you do against blind accident?” For most film noir characters, the answer is, “Nothing.” The cinematography, by Harold Rosson, is wonderful in The Asphalt Jungle, and it seems to accentuate the twists and turns of fate, blind accident, for all the major characters in the film.

During and after the credits, the camera does a slow pan of cobblestones and pavement; it seems to be almost at ground level. A police car approaches starting on the left-hand side of the screen in the distance and moves slowly along the street, still in the distance. The police chatter on the car radio accentuates the realism of the sequence. And it reminds me of Where the Sidewalk Ends, another great film noir but one that is told from the perspective of the police officer. The rest of the opening sequence in The Asphalt Jungle is even more spectacular on subsequent viewings (I have seen the film at least twice). I could pick out more details: litter, dirty pillars, rubble, an old brick façade, wires criss-crossing the sky. The setting is very gritty and realistic, and it sets the mood for the action to come.

(This blog post about The Asphalt Jungle contains spoilers.)

The Asphalt Jungle doesn’t have a femme fatale, but there are female characters and they are not treated very well in this film. None of the female characters could be considered leads, and they have no power in this film, although they sometimes embody the fate that thwarts the jewel thieves. The Asphalt Jungle is an unusual film noir in this instance. But in almost every other respect it is quite conventional: It is a heist film gone terribly wrong, with some sympathetic characters who can’t catch a break because fate keeps getting in their way.

When Ridenschneider is released from prison, he goes back to doing what he does best: planning a heist. He brings together a group of men—Cobby, Dix, Gus, Ciavelli, and Emmerich—who can perform each task in his plan so that they can work as a team. But there are too many of them with conflicting interests, and there are too many chance occurrences that none of them foresee.

During the heist in jewelry store, Dix looks out the jeweler’s window several times, and each shot could be a painting of a street scene in any Midwest town. He sees people walking along the street as though it were any other night. After the alarms go off, the point of view and the street scenes change. Now it is the viewer who sees police cars moving toward the center of the screen and pedestrians walking in toward the center. The cars, the pedestrians, and the viewer’s eye are moving in on the center of the crime scene—and the bank heist participants are being hemmed in by the law.

Dix is the only one who seems to form close bonds with others in the film. Reidenschneider and Dix become close, even though their heist unravels and they have to go their separate ways. Dix doesn’t even accept a single jewel, and neither does Doll, after Reidenschneider decides to go on the run. Dix is also close to Gus; the viewer sees what their relationship is like in Dix’s visits to Gus’s café at the start of the film. Dix and Doll seem to share some affection, although Dix seems almost oblivious at times about it: His first love is horses. And he dreams of buying back the farm (Hickorywood Farm) that his family lost after his father died.

Dix gets what he wants—in a way. He makes it out of the asphalt jungle and returns to Hickorywood Farm. But fate (blind accident) steps in: His gunshot wound (which he suffered when Emmerich and Brannom try to double-cross Reidenschneider and Dix) is worsening, and he collapses in a farm field. The final shot of the horses around him and Doll running toward the farmhouse in the distance, desperately seeking help, was both pastoral and sad. I could see why Doll fell for Dix, in spite of his occasionally menacing demeanor and his crime spree. I think it was the filmmakers’ intention to create sympathy for these characters; I wanted to see Dix and Doll achieve their dreams, even though I knew the plot couldn’t possibly end that way.

Side Street (1950)

March 23, 1950, release date

Directed by Anthony Mann

Screenplay by Sydney Boehm

Based on a story by Sydney Boehm

Music by Lennie Hayton

Edited by Conrad A. Nervig

Cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg

Farley Granger as Joe Norson

Cathy O’Donnell as Ellen Norson

James Craig as George Garsell

Paul Kelly as Captain Walter Anderson

Jean Hagen as Harriette Sinton

Paul Harvey as Emil Lorrison

Edmon Ryan as Victor Backett

Charles McGraw as Detective Stan Simon

Edwin Max as Nick Drumman

Adele Jergens as Lucille Colner

Harry Bellaver as Larry Giff, cabdriver

Whit Bissell as Harold Simpson, chief teller

John Gallaudet as Gus Heldon, bar owner

Esther Somers as Mrs. Malby, Ellen’s mother

Harry Antrim as Mr. Malby, Ellen’s father

Ben Cooper as the young man at the drycleaner’s

King Donovan as Detective Gottschalk

Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

The first time that I started watching Side Street, I caught it on television and started somewhere in the middle. And I couldn’t bear to finish it: I couldn’t bear to see Joe Norson, the main character, in so much trouble. The second time that I watched the film (from start to finish), I realized that the ability of viewers to identify with Joe, his wife Ellen, and their newborn son is the film’s best feature. I cared about Joe, in spite of the fact that he made one bad decision and spent the remainder of the screen time trying get out of serious trouble.

(This blog post about Side Street contains spoilers.)

Captain Walter Anderson (played by Paul Kelly) is the narrator of the film. He’s the voice of reason, and he’s the clue that Joe and Ellen will be fine at the end. His voice-over narration describes New York City as a city of opposites, good and bad, and it reminded me of the television show The Naked City (it also added to the semidocumentary style of the film). Here is the beginning of Captain Anderson’s opening voice-over:

New York City: an architectural jungle where fabulous wealth and the deepest squalor live side by side. New York, the busiest, the loneliest, the kindest and the cruelest of cities. I live here and work here. My name is Walter Anderson. I’m one of an army of 20,000 whose job is to protect the citizens in this city of 8 million. So twenty-four hours a day, you’ll find our men on Park Avenue, Times Square, Central Park, Fulton Market, the subway. Three hundred and eighty new citizens are being born today in the city of New York. One hundred and sixty-four couples are being married. One hundred and ninety-two persons will die. Twelve persons will die violent deaths and at least one of them will be a victim of murder. A murder a day, every day of the year. And each murder will wind up on my desk. . . .

And here is how Captain Anderson closes the film:

This is the story of Joe Norson. No hero, no criminal. Just human, like all of us. Weak, like some of us. A bit foolish, like most of us. Now that we know some of the facts, we can help him. He’s gonna be all right.

Even though Joe’s story is told in a factual, impartial style, Captain Anderson’s reassurance about Joe’s fate was a great relief to me. It’s hard not to root for a family man who loves his wife and child and would do anything to make both of them happy. And Side Street shows us one story, out of so many, which makes viewers’ investment personal. (The same could be said about The Naked City, in which each television episode closed with the following line: “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.”)

Fate plays a large role in Side Street and is almost like another character. Joe Norson makes one really bad decision because he wants the promise of a better postwar life, because he wants the best for his wife and son. Instead, he initiates a series of related coincidences that escalate quickly out of his and anyone else’s control—until the law steps in and promises to do what it can to correct his mistake. At the end of the film, Captain Anderson’s voice-over could also stand as a warning: What happened to Joe Norson could happen to anyone.

Side Street also opens with a lot of foreboding that the voice-over narration merely accentuates. The opening music lets viewers know the tone of the film from the beginning. The movie title and opening credits are shown over beautiful but dizzying—and disorienting—aerial shots of Manhattan. After the overhead shots, the camera goes down to street level and viewers see street scenes. One of them is the sub-Treasury building, where the chase scene at the end of the film comes to a halt. Coming down to street level brings viewers into the city and into Joe Norson’s story, again on an intimate level.

The chase scene near the end of the film deserves particular notice. According to film historian Richard Schickel, who provided the audio commentary on the DVD, the car chase, when Joe Norson, George Garsell, and the cabdriver Larry Giff are pursued by numerous police cars through Lower Manhattan, was filmed entirely on location. It all ends in front of the sub-Treasury building. The bells of Trinity Church start to ring during Joe and Ellen’s reunion, while Captain Walter Anderson gives his reassuring closing lines.

Side Street has it all for a film described as noir: action, romance, danger, mystery, murder. It is one of those films that can pass the test of time because viewers are asked to identify with the main characters and to sympathize with their plight. It’s almost impossible not to identify with Joe and Ellen Norson, and that is one of many factors that make the film and its story a success.