The Burglar (1957)

Director:

Paul Wendkos

Writers:

David Goodis (screenplay)
David Goodis (novel)

Release Date:

June 1957 (USA)

Genre:

Film-Noir | Thriller | Drama

Tagline:

A trail of perfume...and violence!

Plot:

Dan Duryea and his cronies rob a fake spiritualist and then take it on the lam to Atlantic City. |

Plot Keywords:

Beautiful Woman | Based On Novel

Cast

Dan Duryea	...	Nat Harbin
Jayne Mansfield	...	Gladden
Martha Vickers	...	Della
Peter Capell	...	Baylock
Mickey Shaughnessy	...	Dohmer
Wendell K. Phillips	...	Police Captain
Phoebe Mackay	...	Sister Sara
Stewart Bradley	...	Charlie
John Facenda	...	News Commentator
Sam Elber	...	Person
Frank Hall	...	News Reporter
Bob Wilson	...	Newsreel Narrator
Steve Allison	...	State Trooper
Richard Emery	...	Harbin as a Child
Andrea McLaughlin	...	Gladden as a Child
Frank Orrison	...	Person
Ned Carey	...	Person
John Boyd	...	Person
Michael Rich	...	Person
George Kane	...	Person
Sam Cresson	...	Person
Ruth Burnat	...	Person

Directed by
Paul Wendkos

Writing credits
David Goodis		(screenplay)
David Goodis		(novel "The Burglar")

Produced by
Louis W. Kellman	....	producer

Original Music by
Sol Kaplan

Cinematography by
Don Malkames

Film Editing by
Herta Horn
Paul Wendkos

Art Direction by
Jim Leonard

Makeup Department
Josephine Cianelli	....	makeup artist
Gary Elliot	....	hair stylist

Production Management
Ben Berk	....	production manager

Sound Department
Norman Kasow	....	sound editor
John Peckham	....	sound effects

Music Department
Sol Schoenbach	....	musician: solo bassoon (uncredited)

Production Companies

• Columbia Pictures Corporation
• Samson Productions

Distributors

• Columbia Pictures (1957) (USA) (theatrical)

Also Known As:

Runtime:

90 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

Was filmed in the summer of 1955 and not released until 1957 and marketed to cash in on the sudden burst of Jayne Mansfield fame.

Movie Connections:

References Beyond the Forest (1949)

Quietly outstanding noir

Henry Hathaway's movie The Black Rose concerns a Saxon squire who travels to China and back again during the Middle Ages encountering marvels, romance and adventures along the way. It's a pretty and fun Technicolor movie containing a soupçon of rapture. On an intellectual level it can be fairly piffling until close to the end when the Norman King of England refuses to persecute the rebel Walter any longer, recognising that his animosity towards Normans is far from treason, but just a political manifestation of something very personal, conflict with his father. It was an eye opener to me at the time, how much Freudian issues play a subliminal part in our politics. This sort of mature perspective is to be found in The Burglar. It represents an opening up, an efflorescence of noir, typical of the late era (Mickey One, Blast of Silence). In noir authority is often an oppressive force, but in The Burglar, there's the suggestion that it's not the authorities and the system that pre-figure our doom, but our upbringing. It's up to you though, there's leeway for you to see it either way. Who's the enemy is it dad or Big Brother?

In one scene, seemingly totally unconnected from the rest of the film, Nat (The Burglar - Dan Duryea) mooches around the precincts of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and is seen sitting directly below the statue of John Barry, the first head of the United States Navy, in Independence Square, three miles away, just moments before. In sight is Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed. The locations are deserted and he's watched over by some sort of passant sculptural beastie and towered over by fluted columns. Are these relics of the past or an overarching system and structure in which he's alternately powerless and hounded or irrelevant? Does the beastie see him, or is it just a charming piece of stone and is the indelible stain of Dad the issue he can't rub off? I saw a film Paul Wendkos made decades later, Hell Boats, and there was a general ambivalence there as well, which I find very stimulating and mature. There are no easy answers to The Burglar. Although I've mentioned Freud, The Burglar isn't one of those annoying movies that are dogmatically Freudian snoozers; the conversations surrounding the past all come off as extremely natural in effect.

A little tardily, onto the plot! A bunch of small time burglars figure they can up the ante and go for some sparklers. It doesn't take a genius to work out that fate's cosh is waiting for each of them in the shadows one way or the other. Dan Duryea's lead is the standout, but you gotta feel sorry for Peter Capell's hyperactive pop-eyed lookout Baylock. Scared of his own shadow he dreams of owning a plantation in Central America, he hysterically calls it buying "ground", as if what he stands on the rest of the time is something that might open up and swallow him at any time. It's just so clever how this movie grinds out a noir atmosphere with slight tricks of vocabulary.

Even loving this movie with all my heart, I must admit that a relevant criticism for many genre fans wondering if they should watch The Burglar or not is that it lacks thrill in the middle section of the film, principally because Nat has a death wish and isn't putting up much of a fight. Things pick up for the finale on the famous Atlantic City Steel Pier, which comes off as a merging the skews of Lady From Shanghai and Mickey One.

Wendkos' film should have lead to a glittering career, but more meretricious aesthetics triumphed.