Thieves’ Highway (1949)

On The Noir Road:
Rotten To The Core
Thieves’ Highway (1949)
Studio: 20th Century Fox • 94 min B&W • AR 1.33:1 • US: 10 Oct 1949
Re-release: Criterion 224 (Feb 2005)
Starring: Richard Conte, Valentina Cortese, Lee J Cobb, Millard Mitchell, Barbara Lawrence
Dir: Jules Dassin

The name Jules Dassin is not widely known, except to certain movie goers and film scholars, in no small part due to the rather small number of films he directed: 25. But Dassin was not a tragic figure who died too young — that output is spread over 40 years. And he is credited as writer on fully 10 of them; and producer of six. He even appears as an actor in five of those, and fully credited as such in four. In short, despite his relative “unknownness”, Dassin is no cinematic footnote and perhaps the closest thing one comes to being an auteur in this business. He did manage two Oscar nominations in 1960 for Never On Sunday — both as writer and director — and an earlier film, Rififi, landed him Best Director at Cannes in 1955. Thieves’ Highway was his last film made in the US for 15 years having been caught up, as so many noir-ists were, in an anti-Communist purge.

Given so many emigres arrived in Hollywood in the 1930s and ’40s, it’s important to remind ourselves that Dassin was an American director born in Connecticut in 1911 — before the onset of WWI; he died in Athens, in 2008, at the age of 96. His wife, who pre-deceased him, was Greece’s former cultural minister, and sometime movie star, Melina Mercouri. Though Dassin began his career in acting, and entered the world of theater production, he found his career (and calling) after a stint as to assistant Alfred Hitchcock during the 1940 filming of Mr and Mrs Smith.

Greek-American Nick Garcos (Richard Conte) has just returned to his parent’s home after a lengthy tour as merchant seaman. His girlfriend Polly (Barbara Lawrence) has dutifully awaited his return; but tragedy has struck and his father, a truck driver, has lost his legs in an accident. A crooked fruit wholesaler in San Francisco, Mike Figlia (Lee J Cobb), had cheated Nick’s father out of money and was responsible for the accident; the son now vows revenge. Nick teams up with seasoned trucker Ed Kinney (Millard Mitchell) and hauls a load of apples from a nearby orchard to the SF market hoping to encounter Figlia. When he arrives, Nick is side-tracked by local prostitute Rica (Valentina Cortese). Corruption abounds on the road, in the markets, and in most of the deals the players make: but redemption is possible, even if imposed, unexpectedly, by studio boss Daryll Zanuck in the final scenes.

Richard Conte is one of the actors of this period who is capable, and occasionally memorable, but rarely great; here he plays the good guy who steps up to corruption but never crosses the line. The guy’s so super good, you just know he flosses twice a day. I like the guy but, hey, this is 1949 and the dead centre of the noir universe … let’s have a few blemishes at least, please? The studio is Fox, after all, not Disney.

I can’t make my mind up who steals the picture: Lee J Cobb, as the unredeemable corrupt grocer, or the radiant Valentina Cortese as the local prostitute working the “seediest” end of town. Cobb is billed in the trailer as having recently starred in Broadway’s Pulitzer Prize winning Death of a Salesman and there’s no doubt he commands attention in every scene. Conte may be a tough guy but it’s not clear why Cobb would acquiese. To Cobb, Conte never represents a serious threat; at most, a temporary annoyance or perhaps a chump he can squeeze consistently in the future. Cortese, too, might be forgiven for falling for the “tall, dark and handsome” Conte but a degree of natural jadedness, given her profession, seems lacking. Nonetheless, allow me to repeat: Cortese is radiant on screen and no match at all for the shallow and money grasping girlfriend played by Barbara Lawrence. Surely no one in the audience roots for Polly.

There are some remarkable moments in the film, and they tend to be visual, and related to apples rolling down a hill: the scene as Nick and Ed pick up their load from the apple orchard and, temporarily attempt to chisel on the deal; and later, when a truck loses its load high on a hill and the crates of loose apples cascade down. This is not a noir with snappy dialogue nor humourous interludes to relieve the tension; in fact, its general tone of earnestness is a little too relentless. And while commentator Alain Silver, on the included secondary audio track, picks out a number of scenes of technical prowess, none of them quite touch the heart as those apples careening out of control, a visual metaphor for the characters in the film.

The extras that premium priced Criterion provides are adequate, not generous; one remains grateful for the (brief) Dassin interview. In it, the director reveals he had no idea a new ending had been ordered, shot and inserted into his film before release — as he had by this time fled the US and was working on his next film in London, Night And The City, with Richard Widmark and Gene Tierney. Thieves’ Highway has some pretty bleak moments and dire potentialities so this studio-inflicted sunshine-and-lollipops ending is not just jarring, but borders on laughable. Fortunately, the artistry of the preceeding 91 minutes is solid and repays repeat viewings.