Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: The Asphalt Jungle (1950) - Huston's twenty-four carat noir caper thriller

9/24/2013

The Asphalt Jungle (1950) - Huston's twenty-four carat noir caper thriller

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Grimy urban hardness issues form this brilliant poster for John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle, which reveals little and has confident, elegant blood-red credit letters in its bottom

A lucrative jewel heist goes awry for various reasons: Coincidence, accidents and greed...

Rhode Islander master filmmaker John Huston (The Night of the Iguana (1964)) stages a fast-paced, hard-boiled film noir like no one else. The characters of The Asphalt Jungle are juicy and well-written, the dialog so cutting sharp and snappy that this heist thriller is finished before you know it. Not a single second of film is wasted or out of place here in a film that certainly equals Huston's noir classic The Maltese Falcon (1941), if not outright surpasses it in brilliance. Though lurid and darkly humorous at different times, the film preserves a stark realism that distinguishes it as also a serious film about modern (at the time), urban crime and its consequences.
Marilyn Monroe (Love Nest (1951)) - mostly unknown at the time - plays adorable, sexy and dumb; Sam Jaffe (Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)) is brilliant as the top-professional, wise, ice-cold Doc Riedenschneider, and Sterling Hayden (Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Loving the Bomb (1964)) is violent yet sympathetic as the hooligan Dix.
The Asphalt Jungle is a great, exciting and fierce caper noir. It was co-written by Huston and Ben Maddow (The Savage Eye (1959)), adapting the same-titled 1949 novel by W.R. Burnett (Vanity Row (1952)).

Related posts:

John Huston: Chinatown (1974) - Roman Polanski's masterpiece (co-star)
Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) or, The Final Ape! (co-star)
Casino Royale (1967) - The packed spy spoof frontrunner, a film very much of its time (co-star)
Top 10: The best adventure films reviewed by Film Excess to date
The African Queen (1951) - Classic romance bravura de Huston/Bogart/Hepburn

Watch an original trailer for the film here

Cost: 1.2 mil. $
Box office: 2.1 mil. $
= Big flop (returned 1.75 times its cost)
[The Asphalt Jungle premiered 8 June (New York) and runs 112 minutes. Shooting took place in California, including Los Angeles, in Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio from October - December 1949. The film reportedly grossed 1 mil. $ (47.6 % of the total gross) in North America. Despite its release ranking it as a big flop here, the film reportedly made a 40k $ profit. It later collected 29k $ in a 2006 re-release in the UK. It was nominated for 4 Oscars, winning none: It lost Best Supporting Actor (Jaffe) to George Sanders in All About Eve, Cinematography - Black and White (Harold Rosson) to Robert Krasker for The Third Man, Director to Joseph L. Mankewicz for All About Eve, and Screenplay also to Mankewicz for All About Eve. It was also nominated for 3 Golden Globes, a BAFTA, won 2 National Board of Review awards and a prize at the Venice International Film Festival. Huston returned with The Red Badge of Courage (1951). Hayden returned in Journey Into Light (1951); Louis Calhern (Executive Suite (1954)) in A Life of Her Own (1950). The Asphalt Jungle is fresh at 97 % with an 8.59/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

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9/24/2013

The Asphalt Jungle (1950) - Huston's twenty-four carat noir caper thriller

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