Golden Oldie: The Asphalt Jungle

10 April 2012

Nowadays, in crime-heist melodramas, you can hardly extricate the characters from the mechanics of the plot. No such risk with John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle. Here was a director who, in 1950, had already laid down his film noir credentials with The Maltese Falcon and Key Largo. But with W.R. Burnett's story of a loose alliance of criminal talents, he found the perfect rogues' gallery - and the cast to match.

A celebrated criminal lawyer to fence the loot and attempt a double-cross; a personable young Italian as a safeblower; a rancorous Southerner as the gunman; a hunchback as the getaway driver; and a German to mastermind the jewel robbery. Add to this bunch a couple of molls, one played in a defining cameo by Marilyn Monroe. The raid goes wrong - of course - but, even more important to the film's success, it leaves you understanding why and where each of the characters went wrong.

Huston was a man of broad sympathies, understanding human frailty in a forgiving way. The only thing he couldn't forgive was bigotry. You can sense how he spreads his sympathies among the Asphalt Jungle gang. Tarantino and the rest can kill in cold blood and laugh it off; but even when Huston's characters are in for the kill, they remain warmblooded human beings. Sterling Hayden dreams of buying back his family farm; his mistress (Jean Hagen) gives him unreserved love; the mastermind (Sam Jaffe) has a weakness for young women; the city-slick lawyer (Louis Calhern) is allowed to die with dignity. There's something likeable about them all.

When the film opened, it was this very sentiment that drew the fire of some reviewers. Bosley Crowther, then the immensely influential critic of The New York Times, wrote: 'The plain truth is that this picture - sobering though it may be in its ultimate demonstration that a life of crime does not pay - enjoins the hypnotised audience to hobnob with a bunch of crooks, participate with them in their plunderings and actually sympathise with their personal griefs... Everyone in this picture gives an unimpeachable performance. If only it all weren't so corrupt!' Nowadays, of course, the very humanity that Crowther indicted is in such short supply that we're not in any danger of being corrupted by crooks with better sides to their criminal natures.

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