The Asphalt Jungle (1950) - film review

Within hours of leaving prison, criminal mastermind Doc Riedenschneider is preparing his next robbery.  To clean up on a million dollars’ worth of jewels, he recruits a safecracker, Louis Ciavelli, getaway-driver Gus Minissi and hoodlum Dix Handley.  A crooked lawyer Alonzo Emmerich agrees to put up the money for the heist, but his attempt at a double cross backfires.  Although the crooks manage to pull off the robbery, their good fortune proves to be short lived.  One by one, cruel Fate brings them down…

The Asphalt Jungle is the definitive American film noir and marks a significant turning point in the evolution of the thriller genre.  By the time he came to make this film, John Huston had acquired a reputation for noir cinema, having directed such classics as The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).  With The Asphalt Jungle, arguably his greatest film, Huston redefines the gangster movie by bringing a sense of realism and authenticity to the film by paying as much attention to character as to plot.

Significantly, The Asphalt Jungle is the first notable heist movie.  Prior to this film, Hollywood had adhered to a self-imposed moral code not to show the mechanics of a robbery.  Here, that code is well and truly dispensed with and the plot goes into meticulous detail the planning and execution of a spectacular robbery.  Other filmmakers were quick to follow suit, and the crime-thriller genre found new impetus, largely as a result of this film.  Jules Dassin’s French classic Rififi (1955) is perhaps the closest and best of Asphalt ’s many imitators.

What most distinguishes The Asphalt Jungle from earlier crime thrillers is the care and attention paid to characterisation.  It’s as much a study of the psychology of the criminal as it is a film about a jewel robbery.  Each character participating in the crime is given a plausible back story, is shown to have real emotions, real ambitions, real failings.  The lawyer Emmerich still has feelings for his bed-ridden wife, even though he has a much younger mistress.   Dix Handley may look like a brutish thug, but he is proud of his Irish ancestry and dreams of owning a horse farm of his own.  Doc Riedenschneider is philosophical and practical minded; if he has to spend time in jail when a crime goes wrong, so be it – it’s better than winding up on a mortuary slab.  Shady bookmaker and go-between Cobb only wants a quite life but finds himself endlessly put upon by crooks and dodgy police officers.

This level of character detail, together with the high contrast black-and-white, characteristically noir, cinematography, is what lends The Asphalt Jungle its sense of gritty realism and sets it apart from most other thrillers of its time.  Needless-to-say, Huston gets some excellent performances from his skilfully assembled cast, which includes Marilyn Monroe in a small yet significant part and tough guy Sterling Hayden in his first major film role.

© James Travers 2006

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