Thieves' Highway

Beginning with his compelling "Brute Force" ('47)followed by the richly atmospheric "Naked City" ('48), Jules Dassin became the hottest dealer in Hollywood of the Film-Noir genre. "Thieves Highway" adds ethnic tensions to the Dassin stew of lost souls always living at the edge of danger. Richard Conte was at his peak here as the tough trucker, quick to throw a punch when he's threatened and equally capable of rolling with them if necessary. In Robert Siodmak's "Cry of the City," he's held in a headlock by a butch Hope Emerson; in this one, a jack gives way and a truck fender lands on his neck....ouch!

Conte, like Burt Lancaster, came from a streetwise background that, second only to a boxing ring, fitted him neatly as a glove when it came to movies like "Thieves Highway." Conte was so good in this, he was selected to repeat the role on TV six years later under the title "Overnight Haul" on the old 20th Century-Fox Hour.

As for Dassin, he had yet a fourth fling at the genre the following year with the claustrophobic thriller, "Night and the City." A film worth commenting on later. As for "Thieves Highway," having seen it, you may want to follow it up with Clouzot"s "Wages of Fear," made three years later and the ultimate truckers' movie. As a boy I was privileged to have seen all four Dassin movies during their original releases. How thrilling to see "Thieves Highway" and "Night and the City" now out on DVD!

I've seen hundreds of noirs and this small character study is one of the very best. If Dassin's simple but heartfelt story of betrayal and redemption doesn't tug at you hard, you must be made of stone. The acting triumvirate of Conte, Cortez and Cobb has never been better. I get angry just thinking about Cobb's brilliantly callous performance as the deceptive chiseler who destroys lives to make an extra buck. Cortez is subtle sexuality incarnate but she displays real range and sensitivity as the one who first destroys Conte's life then ultimately redeems it. The always reliable Conte is absolutely at his best as the desperately driven truck driver who sets out to right a terrible wrong but soon learns that you can't beat the system. The last shot of the fruit rolling down the hill has to be one of the most evocative and heartbreaking in all of noir.

Tiny budgeted movies sometimes suffer in translating reality, but much of HIGHWAY appears to have been shot on location, particularly in the produce warehouses, shoddy back alleys and winding country roads, which adds a ton of authenticity. The story takes about 15 minutes to get going, but from there it delivers amazing power and emotion. For decades it was one of those buried low budget classics almost impossible to find, but thankfully a couple years ago it finally got the DVD release it deserved. Trust me on this one, noir fans... Thieves' Highway is a haunting trip down a rocky road you want to take.

I have stumbled over the works of Jules Dassin only lately, first the atmospheric and gripping "Night and the City" and now "Thieves Highway", something you would certainly label a sociological drama today. Rchard Conte as a guy out on the mission to avenge the death of his brother and the crippling of his father from indirectly the hands of a corrupt fruit market guy. Wonderful acting by all main people, Richard Conte, Lee J Cobb, Millard Mitchell, and the Italian actress who never made it to a status that i can recall her name without checking the credits again... Dire portrait of the fight for existence of the trucker guys, the ways the retailer controls both ends of the supply chain and the mean and dark ways in a big market. Vegetables and fruits may just be a metaphor for something else, you see.... If you can get it on cable or DVD, don't let it pass by.

Turkish born (to Greek and Armenian parents) writer A.L. Bezzerides often wrote about experiences, he actually once drove trucks for a company his father started. Here, his story takes on the struggles of those 'little' trucking men to survive against BIG odds. The big odds being self seeking corruption amongst the soul-less fruit market wheeler dealers.

This film is a wild ride in any mans language! and ace Director Jules Dassin, just months before being foolishly hunted out of Hollywood by the House of Un-American Activities, holds the pace with near relentless energy...endless set backs mount throughout. Dassin was a rare kind of American Director, perhaps because of his Russian parentage he possessed a uniquely European style. In fact, he must be the only American to direct a French crime classic ('Rififi' 55) and reel it in on par with, if not better than, the French themselves! Check out other dynamic mood pieces by Dassin: 'Night and the City' 51 ~ 'Naked City' 48 ~ 'Phaedra' 62 (with Theodorakis's magnificent score) In '57 he also had the rare award winner 'He who must Die', etc....

He could hardly have had a better Director of Photography for 'Highway', than veteran Norbert Bodine. Bodine brings his years of experience to grace this film with moody, spectacular visuals, in the style of 'Kiss of Death '47 ~ 'Of Mice and Men' 39 and the now rare 'Little Man What Now' 34.

Performances are uniformly good, Conte the everyman, Cobb the evil thief, Cortese's first American film, (years later she would appear as the Mother in 1973's 'Brother Sun Sister Moon") there's also good support from several solid old reliables. This was not the first time writer Brezzerides had hit the highways, in 1940 he wrote that other road classic 'They Drive by Night'. He shows diversity with 'Beneath the 12 mile Reef' in '53. Fox's talented man of music, Alfred Newman added his familiar style with an exiting music score.

Then along came Darrel F. Zanuck's interfering hand, apparently re-writing, and re-shooting the ending...adding a silly tacked-on, overly 'sunny' closing. Why interfere when something is working as well as this...? The DVD I bought is the Fox Studio Classics release, it's OK, but the copy I have, has some disappointing digital pixels in the image. I've heard the Criterion disc is superior (the Criterion cover is better also). Who knows, they may even come up with the original ending...? Excellent story and overall film, pity about the ending.

Thieves' Highway opens with a view of sunny Fresno, California, a hay cart passing in the foreground—not the setting you'd expect for a film noir. But as this movie shows, the business of transporting and selling fruit and vegetables is as cut-throat and corrosive as any criminal enterprise. Directed by the soon-to-be-blacklisted Jules Dassin and starring left-wing Group Theater veterans Lee J. Cobb and Richard Conte, Thieves' Highway is really an expose of the rotten heart of capitalism; everyone in the movie is obsessed with making a buck. The central symbol is apples: nourishing and wholesome, corrupted when they are equated with money. A Polish farmer, enraged at being paid less than he was promised for his apples, flings boxes of them off a truck, screaming, "Seventy-five cents! Seventy-five cents!" When the truck later runs off the road, careens down a hillside and explodes, there is a haunting, silent image of the scattered apples rolling down the slope. When the hero finds out that money-grubbers have gone out to collect the dead trucker's load and sell it, he begins kicking over crates of apples, fuming, "Four bits a box!"

The hero is Nick Garcos, a navy veteran who returns home to find that his Greek immigrant father has lost both legs in a trucking accident caused by a crooked produce dealer named Mike Figlia. Bent on revenge, Nick teams up with a trucker named Ed to haul the season's first Golden Delicious apples to San Francisco, where he'll be able to track down Figlia. There's an evocative montage sequence of the grueling overnight drive, at the end of which Nick arrives at the produce market, already bustling before daybreak. Figlia spots him and immediately plans to cheat him as he did his father. He hires a local prostitute, Rica, to distract Nick while he steals his load. Meanwhile Ed, having trouble with his truck, is still hours away. Figlia's plans go awry when Rica falls for Nick, and Nick turns out to be tougher and quicker on the uptake than his father. Prone to issuing threats such as, "Gyp me and I'll cut your heart out," he squeezes fair payment out of Figlia and excitedly calls his girl-next-door fiancée to meet him so they can get married, despite his obvious attraction to Rica. Nice girl Polly turns out to be even more interested in money than the prostitute. Figlia's methods turn increasingly violent, leading to a showdown with Nick in a roadhouse.

Most of Thieves' Highway was filmed on location in Frisco's produce market and nearby waterfront, gritty and vibrant settings bustling with trucks and pushcarts and shouting men, dripping produce, ashcan fires, crowded diners and seedy bars. The film's acting has the same visceral naturalism, from Lee J. Cobb's crass, blustery, hypocritical thug to Millard Mitchell's tough-as-nails trucker. Richard Conte brings a stunning physicality to his role as a hot-headed yet intelligent man who is easily the world's most elegant truck driver. He uses his intense gaze and graceful movements to charismatic effect and reacts to his surroundings with vivid sensuality. The high point and heart of the movie are the sexy scenes between Nick and Rica. Often confined in her small bedroom, they circle each other warily, alternating between barbed hostility and explosive passion. During their first kiss, they look a few seconds away from getting into serious trouble with the Hays Office. When Nick initially resists her advances, Rica taunts him, "What's the matter, don't you like girls?" "Sure I like girls," he replies, "I always wished I had a kid sister, wearing pigtails down to here…You were somebody's kid sister once." Escaping from the cliché of the whore with a heart of gold, Valentina Cortese is a mercurial blend of playfulness, hurt and defiance. She displays open lust for Conte—digging her nails into his bare chest, rubbing her dark curls in his face—that is rare for the forties. Contrary to the pattern in many noirs, in Thieves' Highway lust does not corrupt, as greed does. It belongs with the life-affirming, humane side of the movie: with Nick's warm and loving immigrant parents, with Ed's unexpected decency when he saves Nick's life after a roadside accident, with the beautiful vision of the Polish farmer's orchard and its bounty of fresh golden apples.