Saw The Asphalt Jungle, a heist noir. It's a fairly straightforward film. The plan is laid out, the troops assembled, the heist, then the tricky aftermath for the denouement. This film comes to us from the 50s and is interesting in how it humanizes its characters. The most fascinating character is the rich guy who's bankrolling the operation. He's struggling financially and the actor who plays him does an excellent job of subtly stuttering and wincing, belying his confident exterior. Well done.
This film comes to us from the 50s, a time of deep law and order, and yet the protagonists are fairly likable. They're a far cry from the gleeful psychopaths and foreign agents of the 40s noirs. Then again, the ringleader of the gang is German - surely this is a significant thing for the 50s, when memories of WW2 must have been quite fresh. The ringleader is a kind of gentleman, very clever and always talking about his love for beautiful ladies. Maybe in the 50s this was meant to indicate complete sexual depravity, but to me today it just seemed humanizing and kind of sympathetic. There's also a fairly moving speech near the end of the film from the Police Commissioner to a gang of hostile press agents about the necessity of having cops and the terrible evils in this world. There's a tension here between sympathy for the bad guys and condemnation of their actions.
This was not a super-exciting film. The sympathetic bad guys are fairly straight-laced and genteel. Very polite, but not very exciting. The films simultaneous sympathy and condemnation suggests a subversive underbelly, kept in check either by McCarthyism or by the Production Code. Unfortunately, I only really picked up on this by the end of the film and anyway lack the context to tell what's really shocking about it. I should see this film again.
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