Review: "The Asphalt Jungle" is a Film-Noir Gem (Remembering Sterling Hayden)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 152 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux

The Asphalt Jungle (1950) – B&W
Running time:  112 minutes (1 hour, 52 minutes)
DIRECTOR:  John Huston
WRITERS:  Ben Maddow and John Huston (from the novel by W.R. Burnett)
PRODUCER:  Arthur Hornblow, Jr.
CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Harold Rosson (D.o.P.)
EDITOR:  George Boemler
COMPOSER:  Mikos Rozsa
Academy Award nominee

FILM-NOIR/CRIME/DRAMA/THRILLER

Starring:  Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen, James Whitmore, Sam Jaffe, John McIntire, Marc Lawrence, Barry Kelley, Anthony Caruso, Teresa Celli, and Marilyn Monroe

The subject of this movie review is The Asphalt Jungle, a 1950 film noir and crime drama co-written and directed by John Huston.  The film is based on the 1949 novel, The Asphalt Jungle, written by author W.R. Burnett.  The Asphalt Jungle the movie is a caper film that focuses on an initially-successful jewelry heist that turns sour because of bad luck and double-crossing.

There was a time when an urban crime drama didn’t require massively staged shootouts in which by the time the credits rolled literally hundreds of bullet shell casings had hit the ground.  There was indeed a time before painfully loud gunfire and bodies flying backwards from high impact bullet hits.  That was before Hong Kong produced cop dramas and crime thrillers were the gold standard for crime films.  That was a time when all a director needed was a solid script, a large ensemble cast of character actors, and a gritty, urban American setting.

That simple age yielded a film like director John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle.  The actor/writer/director best known for such films as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The African Queen could also turn a cool trick with such crime films as the timeless flick, The Maltese Falcon, and the Oscar-nominated Prizzi’s Honor.  Released in 1950, fans of the movie genre, Film-Noir, consider The Asphalt Jungle to be a noir classic.

The film follows a band of thieves who plan and execute a million dollar jewelry store heist.  Fresh out of prison, German-born master thief, Doc Erwin Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe, who earned an Oscar nomination for his performance), takes into his confidence a wily hood named “Cobby” Cobb (Marc Lawrence) who runs an illegal betting parlor.  Cobb helps Doc assemble just the kind of team he needs to execute his crime:  Louis Ciavelli (Anthony Caruso), a safe cracker; Gus Minissi (James Whitmore), a driver; and Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden), a hooligan or thug.

However, they run into complications with the man who is supposed to help them fence (sell) the diamonds on the black market, Alonzo D. “Lon” Emmerich (Louis Calhern), a prominent criminal attorney.  Lon is in deep financial straits.  Broke and desperate for cash, he plots with a shady cohort, to double cross Doc and his gang, which, of course, puts the entire plan on the road to ruin.

John Houston and his crew splendidly create the gritty and grimy world in which skilled thieves and hardened criminals exist.  An underworld, it is indeed as the film’s tagline reads, “The City Under the City,” or at least it is the world behind the backdoors, alleyways, and criminal haunts (like Gus’s restaurant).  The actors superbly play to type the kind of ethnic and poor white characters that fill such stories – career criminals whose jobs or addictions (like Dix’s gambling habit) force them to continue working the streets the same way the needs of a family necessitate that an honest man or woman keep working just about everyday.

The Asphalt Jungle isn’t glossy or shiny noir.  Houston’s film is as matter-of-fact and as tough as Hayden’s Dix Handley – mistrustful of those who might befriend him and ready to put a big hurt on anyone in his way.  The Asphalt Jungle seems not to really care if someone likes it, and that makes this coarse little film truly a gem of a crime film and a gritty Film-Noir treat.

8 of 10
A

NOTES:
1951 Academy Awards:  4 nominations: “Best Actor in a Supporting Role” (Sam Jaffe), “Best Cinematography, Black-and-White” (Harold Rosson), “Best Director” (John Huston), and “Best Writing, Screenplay” (Ben Maddow and John Huston)

1951 BAFTA Awards:  1 nomination:  “Best Film from any Source” (USA)

1951 Golden Globes:  3 nominations: “Best Cinematography - Black and White” (Harold Rosson), “Best Motion Picture Director” (John Huston), and “Best Screenplay” (John Huston and Ben Maddow)

2008 National Film Preservation Board, USA:  National Film Registry

Monday, July 17, 2006

Updated:  Friday, May 23, 2014


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Review: Marilyn Monroe and Don Murray Still Heat Up "Bus Stop" (Remembering Marilyn Monroe)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 12 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux

Bus Stop (1956)
Running time:  96 minutes (1 hour, 36 minutes)
DIRECTOR:  Joshua Logan
WRITER:  George Axelrod (based on the plays of William Inge)
PRODUCER:  Buddy Adler
CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Milton Krasner (D.o.P.)
EDITOR:  William Reynolds
COMPOSERS:  Cyril J. Mockridge and Alfred Newman
Academy Award nominee

ROMANCE/COMEDY/DRAMA

Starring:  Marilyn Monroe, Don Murray, Arthur O’Connell, Betty Field, Eileen Heckart, Robert Bray, and Hope Lange

The subject of this movie review is Bus Stop, a 1956 romantic comedy and drama from director Joshua Logan.  Bus Stop is based on two plays, People in the Wind and Bus Stop (1955), by American novelist, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, and Oscar-winning screenwriter, William Inge.  Bus Stop the movie focuses on a naive but stubborn cowboy (he’s a virgin) and a saloon singer whom the cowboy tries to take against her will back to his ranch in Montana.

An innocent (and infantile) rodeo cowboy named Beauregard “Bo” Decker (Don Murray) temporarily leaves his Montana ranch to attend a rodeo in Phoenix, Arizona.  His surrogate father Virgil (Arthur O’Connell), who travels with him, thinks it time for the sexually inexperienced 21-year old to find a wife.  What Virgil didn’t have in mind was for Bo to fall in love with Cherie (Marilyn Monroe), an abused bar singer with a lot of man mileage on her.  Bo, used to having his way and naively regarding women as if they were nothing more than life stock, stalks and kidnaps Cherie in order to bring her back to the ranch.  It’s at the titular bus stop where Bo finally gets him comeuppance, but does love still bloom?

Many people consider Bus Stop, based upon a well-known stage play of the time, to be the film in which Marilyn Monroe showed that she could act and that she wasn’t just a hot, blond tart.  Although her performance is a bit over the top (wildly over the top in some places to the point of giving a performance that verges on hysteria), she seems to really fit this film.  Don Murray, however, steals Bus Stop, in his first movie role after getting recognition for his stage work.  He earned an Oscar® nomination as a supporting actor for Bus Stop, but he is really the lead, as the film and story revolves around Murray’s Bo and Arthur O’Connell’s Virgil.  The thoroughly handsome Murray is a lightning bolt and a ball of boundless energy.  He really does sell the notion that he is a virginal cowboy who knows nothing about women, and he also makes the father-son relationship with O’Connell feel real.

Bus Stop is an odd and quirky film that is equally parts romance and comedy, more of a comic romance than a romance comedy.  Joshua Logan (Picnic, 1955) does a fine job with what could have been a curious film disaster by keeping the pace fast, never letting us focus on the story’s logical missteps.  He makes the audience laugh with the characters, and he turns up the romance just at the proper moments.

8 of 10
A

NOTES:
1957 Academy Awards, USA:  1 nomination: “Best Actor in a Supporting Role” (Don Murray)

1957 BAFTA Awards:  1 nomination: “Most Promising Newcomer to Film” (Don Murray-USA)

1957 Golden Globes, USA:  2 nominations: “Best Motion Picture - Musical/Comedy” and “Best Motion Picture Actress - Comedy/Musical” (Marilyn Monroe)

Updated:  Monday, August 05, 2013

Review: "All About Eve" is an Eternal Film Classic (Happy B'day, Bette Davis)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 41 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux

All About Eve (1950) – Black & White
Running time: 138 minutes (2 hour, 18 minutes)
DIRECTOR: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
WRITER: Joseph L. Mankiewicz (based upon the short story, “The Wisdom of Eve” by Mary Orr)
PRODUCER: Daryl F. Zanuck
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Milton R. Krasner
EDITOR: Barbara McLean
Academy Award winner

DRAMA

Starring: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Gary Merrill, Hugh Marlowe, Gregory Ratoff, Barbara Bates, Marilyn Monroe, and Thelma Ritter

The subject of this movie review is the 1950 American drama, All About Eve. This Oscar-winning “Best Picture” was produced by Daryl F. Zanuck and was based upon Mary Orr’s 1946 short story, “The Wisdom of Eve.”

Considered the great “backstage” movie of all time, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve was recently released in one of those shiny DVD retrospective packages, deservedly so. Filled with an all star cast that is more than up to the challenge of turning on the thespian heat, the film is as mesmerizing, catty, and blunt as it probably was over half a century ago.

Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), an aspiring actress, insinuates herself into a circle of theatre friends, the most famous of them being the established but aging stage actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis). Eve wants so badly to be an actress that she will manipulate, grovel, connive, lie, cheat, and do whatever it takes to make it as a star of the theatre, including hiding her real name and creating a fictitious past. Before long she is Margo’s unofficial assistant and soon fashions a close relationship with Margo’s best friend, Karen Richard (Celeste Holm), but she has her eyes of Karen’s husband Lloyd (Hugh Marlowe), a popular and critically respected playwright. Margo, in a sense, is Lloyd’s muse, and she has starred in most of Lloyd’s plays; however, Margo is fortyish and beyond the age of some of Lloyd’s youthful fictional female leads. Here is where Eve believes she can step in and capture the essence of a Lloyd character, and with the help of Addison DeWitt (George Sanders), a theatre critic (and the film’s dominant narrator), she makes it to the top of the theatrical world over the bodies of her friends.

All About Eve is a study of where ambition can get you, but it is also an examination of how cut throat a person feels she has to be to get to the top. Ms. Baxter languishes in the early part of her character as the tepid friend who just wants to serve Margo, but the actress bears her fangs and claws when Eve finally gets the proverbial foot in the door. It’s a radical and shocking transformation.

What can I add about the incomparable Bette Davis? Believe me, she shines like a nova, and she chews up her part. Margo is a force of nature and a supernatural force, throwing her weight around the story. The movie is ostensibly about Eve; she is the catalyst for the proceedings, but much of the film deals with Margo’s travails. Ms. Davis’s performance is the work of an actress dominating the screen in the chosen style of the time. Movie lovers, films buffs, and critics – none of them should ever miss this on the strength of Ms. Davis’s performance alone.

It’s a bonus to get star performances by Sanders (who won an Academy Award for his supporting role as DeWitt), drool and witty by turns and slightly menacing and all knowing most of the time. Hugh Marlowe hams it up as the playwright Lloyd Richards, but it’s the only way he can keep up with Ms. Davis.

As the film approaches the end, it really delves into the process of how stars of the stage are born, but it really lays bare the potential for ugliness in a dog eat dog world. By the end of the film, you can’t help but watch Eve’s ascendancy and realize that you have been watching what could be a story similar to Margo’s as a young, struggling actress. All About Eve is about Eve becoming Margo as the latter’s career winds to the end and the former becomes the new star of Broadway and theatre. And as another ingénue walks into the picture as the story closes, we realize that the stage is a vicious circle. Eve is about to experience what she did to Eve and her friends.

There’s only one Margo, and there’s usually only place for one at the top. In the world of performance, one has to climb over everyone else who is also trying to reach the pinnacle. After you’ve reached the top, you can sulk over the bitter feelings and ruthless process. You can wish things hadn’t been so nasty, but at least you get to sulk from the top of the heap.

9 of 10
A+

NOTES:
1951 Academy Awards: 6 wins: “Best Director” (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), “Best Picture” (20th Century Fox), “Best Actor in a Supporting Role” (George Sanders), “Best Costume Design, Black-and-White” (Edith Head and Charles Le Maire), “Best Sound, Recording” ((20th Century-Fox Sound Dept.), and “Best Writing, Screenplay” (Joseph L. Mankiewicz); 8 nominations: “Best Actress in a Leading Role” (Anne Baxter), “Best Actress in a Leading Role” (Bette Davis), “Best Actress in a Supporting Role” (Celeste Holm), “Best Actress in a Supporting Role” (Thelma Ritter), “Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White” (Lyle R. Wheeler, George W. Davis, Thomas Little, and Walter M. Scott), “Best Cinematography, Black-and-White” (Milton R. Krasner), “Best Film Editing” (Barbara McLean), “Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture” (Alfred Newman)

1951 BAFTA Awards: 1 win: “Best Film from any Source” (USA)

1951 Golden Globes: 1 win: “Best Screenplay” (Joseph L. Mankiewicz); 5 nominations: “Best Motion Picture – Drama,” “Best Motion Picture Actress – Drama” (Bette Davis), “Best Motion Picture Director” (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), “Best Supporting Actor” (George Sanders), and “Best Supporting Actress” (Thelma Ritter)

1990 National Film Preservation Board: National Film Registry

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