I understand Jules Dassin was more or less driven to work in Europe by the HUAC investigations. If he was a Commie you'd never be able to tell from this film, which fits right smack into the frame established by the Warner Brothers' working-class films of the 1930s -- "Manpower," "Tiger Shark," "They Drive By Night," and a dozen others. "They Drive By Night," was written actually by the same writer as "Thieves' Highway," Besserides, a Greek-American from California's central valley, a truck driver by training.
Dassin has directed this piece about relatively small-time skulduggery and double crosses efficiently, and he has a good cast. Richard Conte is more animated than usual. Lee J. Cobb is a kind of Johnny Friendly who runs a big but crooked fruit stand. Barbara Lawrence is beautiful, as a model should be, and is as tall as a giraffe. Valentina Cortese has a thoroughly novel role -- a whore with a heart of gold. Her acting isn't exactly subtle. Maybe she had trouble with the language. But she's magnetic, perhaps because she's given some of the best lines in the film and is a more complex character than most of the others. Maybe too it has something to do with her appearance. She's not a beautiful woman. Her face is long, and her nose almost equally long. It's not a Roman nose either. It's Milanese. She has tiny shoulders and very little neck so that she seems hunched over most of the time. But her eyes are exquisite if they are considered individually, as they must be because each is unique and each looks in a different direction. Yes, I think that's her secret. The eyes have it.
The story is out of a B movie. The good guys are good and the bad guys are bad. There are some characters in between -- Millard Mitchell, Cortese, Conte, and two mostly comedic hot-shots -- who may not be entirely dishonorable but are capable of being bent by the drive for money and revenge.
The B-movie budget shows, alas, and there's a tacked-on ending in which a cop shakes his finger in our faces and warns us that just because we've been wronged, that doesn't mean we can go around taking the law into our own hands. The scene was written and directed by Darryl F. Zanuck without Dassin's knowledge. Watching this engaging but no-more-than adequate film, one wonders what could have been done with an A-movie budget. A little more time (shooting took about one month), more money, more thoughtful casting, more polish on the script. It might have been better than good enough.
Dassin has directed this piece about relatively small-time skulduggery and double crosses efficiently, and he has a good cast. Richard Conte is more animated than usual. Lee J. Cobb is a kind of Johnny Friendly who runs a big but crooked fruit stand. Barbara Lawrence is beautiful, as a model should be, and is as tall as a giraffe. Valentina Cortese has a thoroughly novel role -- a whore with a heart of gold. Her acting isn't exactly subtle. Maybe she had trouble with the language. But she's magnetic, perhaps because she's given some of the best lines in the film and is a more complex character than most of the others. Maybe too it has something to do with her appearance. She's not a beautiful woman. Her face is long, and her nose almost equally long. It's not a Roman nose either. It's Milanese. She has tiny shoulders and very little neck so that she seems hunched over most of the time. But her eyes are exquisite if they are considered individually, as they must be because each is unique and each looks in a different direction. Yes, I think that's her secret. The eyes have it.
The story is out of a B movie. The good guys are good and the bad guys are bad. There are some characters in between -- Millard Mitchell, Cortese, Conte, and two mostly comedic hot-shots -- who may not be entirely dishonorable but are capable of being bent by the drive for money and revenge.
The B-movie budget shows, alas, and there's a tacked-on ending in which a cop shakes his finger in our faces and warns us that just because we've been wronged, that doesn't mean we can go around taking the law into our own hands. The scene was written and directed by Darryl F. Zanuck without Dassin's knowledge. Watching this engaging but no-more-than adequate film, one wonders what could have been done with an A-movie budget. A little more time (shooting took about one month), more money, more thoughtful casting, more polish on the script. It might have been better than good enough.