OVP: The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Film: The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Stars: Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen, James Whitmore, Sam Jaffe, Marilyn Monroe

Director: John Huston

Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Director, Supporting Actor-Sam Jaffe, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June, in honor of the 10th Anniversary of The Many Rantings of John, we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

We are hitting the halfway point in our month-long celebration of film noir, so it makes sense that we finally enter the 1950's, and we're doing so with not just the most lauded of the films we'll profile (at least in terms of Oscar success), but also one that brought about a future global superstar.  Marilyn Monroe didn't star in a lot of film noir once she became a big name, but in the first few years of her career, she made four films in the genre: Don't Bother to Knock, Clash by Night, Niagara, and The Asphalt Jungle.  We are only going to do one of these films this month (we've still got a lot of ground to cover as we're ending in the 1970's), but I will confess that while I've seen 70+% of Monroe's films, I've never seen any of these movies, despite the fact that film noir is my favorite genre.  So let's check out The Asphalt Jungle.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Doc (Jaffe) a criminal genius who has just gotten out of prison, and is already hoping for his next big score.  He thinks he's found it when he chances upon a stash of jewelry worth half a million dollars.  However, Doc needs three men (a safecracker, a driver, & a "hooligan") to pull off the job, and that requires money, which he gets (supposedly) from Alonzo Emmerich (Calhern)...but Emmerich doesn't actually have the money.  He's broke, and is planning on stealing the jewelry for himself.  One of the three men that Doc hires is Dix Handley (Hayden), who is a bit of a renegade whose only truly redeeming quality is his ex Doll Conovan (Hagen), who loves him despite his faults.  As you might expect, things go awry with the jewelry heist, and one-by-one each of the men fall, leaving behind the women who love them.

One of those women is Monroe.  This was very early in her career (the same year she made her big splash in All About Eve in an equally small role), and here she's playing Calhern's girlfriend (he's married to another, older woman).  Monroe steals every scene she is in, though it's hard to tell how much of that is sheer screen persona and how much of it is performance.  This is, admittedly, always the problem with Monroe's movies-how can you tell the difference between the legend and the actress?

Taking the Monroe out of it, this is a fine movie, with strong performances all-around (Calhern, Jaffe, & Hagen are also great), but no one is hitting a home run.  Hagen & Jaffe, in particular, feel like they're one scene short of something truly incredible, and that's kind of the film's problem.  There's nothing wrong with it, but with the Hays Code keeping its neck on the inevitable ending (the audience is actively rooting for the bad guys, and wants at least one of them to get away with the heist), it kind of feels like a letdown when they all end up dead or in jail.  Needs more focus, but well-edited & it picks up in the back-half.

Previous Films in the Series: Murder My Sweet, The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, The Killers, The Big Sleep, Daisy Kenyon, Nightmare Alley, Ride the Pink Horse, The Woman on the Beach, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Night and the City, They Live By Night, Gun Crazy, In a Lonely Place, Sweet Smell of Success, The Big Heat, Pickup on South Street, The Killing, The Long Goodbye, Body Heat