Wednesday Minute
No. 124 | June 23, 2010

The Art of the Heist

Our theme this week
Heist films

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   The Thomas Crown Affair (1968, 1999)
Tuesday         —   Rififi (1955)

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

The Asphalt Jungle is a heist film in the noir tradition, directed by a master of film noir, John Huston, and adapted from the novel by a master of crime fiction, W.R. Burnett. 

The plot elements are not unlike what you see in other films of the genre.  A criminal gets out of prison and rounds up a team of crooks.  They plan a big score, knocking off a jewelry store.  The crime is carried off with precision—the break-in, disabling the alarm, evading the electric eye.  Then, something goes wrong.  A watchman interrupts the heist.  A shot is fired, wounding one of the criminals.  The men escape.  One of the criminals double-crosses the others.  Separately, the men try to elude a police manhunt.  Fate finds each of them, one way or another.

Sounds familiar, but that’s not to say The Asphalt Jungle is derivative.  Just the opposite.  It’s the movie that a thousand other heist films have borrowed from, some directly, some a few generations removed.

The plot is clean and compelling, but the real appeal of the story is the characters.  The thieves are ordinary men, real flesh and blood, not just types.  They’re not the kind of bad guys you often see in early gangster films.  You understand where these men come from.  You see the world through their eyes.  They make crime seem like just another line of business.

The stellar cast includes Louis Calhern as  Alonzo D. Emmerich, the lawyer whom the criminals need to finance the operation.  Sam Jaffe is the mastermind just out of prison, Doc Riedenschneider (a name borrowed years later by the Coens).  Doc’s picks for the break-in team include tough guy Dix Handley, memorably played by noir favorite Sterling Hayden; the driver Gus Minissi, an early role for James Whitmore; and the safecracker Louie Ciavelli,  portrayed by character actor Anthony Caruso.  Two of the women to watch are Jean Hagen, in one of her best performances, and Marilyn Monroe, in the first of a pair of small roles in 1950 (the other, in All About Eve) that helped launch her career.

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The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
John Huston, director
Trailer

 

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The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
Sterling Hayden, Jean Hagen

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Quote of Note
May:  Oh Lon, when I think of all those awful people you come in contact with—downright criminals—I get scared.
Alonzo:  Oh, there’s nothing so different about them.  After all, crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavor.
—May Emmerich (Dorothy Tree), Alonzo D. Emmerich (Louis Calhern), The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

…58…59…60.

Tuesday Minute
No. 123 | June 22, 2010

The Art of the Heist

Our theme this week
Heist films

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   The Thomas Crown Affair (1968, 1999)

Rififi (1955)

Rififi is a French movie made by American-born director Jules Dassin, in his return to filmmaking after being blacklisted by Hollywood.  Rififi isn’t the earliest heist film, but it’s a classic of the genre and it ranks among the most influential, along with (to cite just a couple of examples from French cinema) Jacques Becker’s Grisbi (1954), starring Jean Gabin, and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le Flambeur (1956), perhaps the best of the lot.

The Rififi plot follows four gangsters as they plan and execute a robbery at a Paris jeweler’s.  Tony (Jean Servais) is just out of prison, persuaded to join Jo (Carl Möhner) and Mario (Robert Manuel), a Swede and Italian, for one last job.  Jules Dassin (credited under a pseudonym) plays César, the expert safe cracker whose mistress is a nightclub chanteuse.

Rififi is notable for its suspense and its sympathetic portrayal of gangsters.  Its most famous sequence is the heist, a nearly silent set piece lasting about a half-hour, as the thieves break into and rob the jewelry shop.  The filmmaking is as expertly done as the theft, each moment planned in precise detail and pulled off to perfection.

The final third of the film follows the consequences of the crime on the men involved.  César betrays the others, and he and Tony have a final confrontation.  Jo’s son is kidnapped, leading to a desperate search for the boy.  Tony finally tracks him down at the country estate of Grutter, the owner of the nightclub.  Bleeding profusely, Tony escapes, taking a wild ride back to Paris in a memorable final scene.

Jules Dassin continued making films, mostly in Europe, until 1980.  In 1964 he returned to the heist genre with Topkapi, set in Istanbul and starring his wife-to-be Melina Mercouri.

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Rififi (1955)
Jules Dassin, director
Trailer

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Rififi (1955)
Magali Noël
“Rififi” (Jacques Larue, lyrics, M. Philippe-Gérard, music)

 

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Quote of Note
“There’s not a safe that can resist César and not a woman that César can resist.”
—Mario Ferrati (Robert Manuel), Rififi (1955)

…58…59…60.

Monday Minute
No. 122 | June 21, 2010

The Art of the Heist

What the heck was going on in the art world last month?

PARIS, May 20 (AP) — “A broken alarm system made it as easy as 1-2-3:  A masked intruder clipped a padlock, smashed a window and stole a Picasso, a Matisse and three other masterpieces from a Paris museum Thursday — a $123 million haul that is one of the world’s biggest art heists.”  (More at NPR.)

MARSEILLES, May 22 (CBC) — “Art thieves have struck again in France by stealing five pictures, including a Picasso lithograph, from the home of an art collector in Marseilles only a day after a major heist in Paris.  French police said Saturday the owner was beaten up at his home in southern France on Friday.”

LONDON, May 21 (E!) — “You know if this happened to Naomi Campbell, we’d have a bad case of street justice on our hands.  Instead, it was the unlucky Kate Moss whose London home was burgled around 4 a.m. Thursday….  No crime of fashion, these sticky-fingered criminals weren’t after Moss’ designer duds, but rather her pricey art collection, as they made off with several pieces, including a portrait from guerrilla artist Banksy worth more than $115,000 (incidentally, two other Banksy works were also stolen from a London gallery earlier this month).”

You read those news stories, and if you’re like me, you may be thinking, Haven’t I seen this movie before?

Countless heist movies have been made over the years.  The genre took off in the 1950s and it’s been popular ever since.  More recently there have been some notable remakes.  Art heists are just one popular subject of these caper films.  Other times the thieves’ target is a stash of jewels, or gold bullion, or a bundle of cash.

We’ll look at a range of heist films this week, but before we get to them, here are clips from a couple of documentaries specifically about art theft.  Stolen is a film about the 1990 heist at the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston involving  thirteen works worth more the $500 million, by artists such as Vermeer, Rembrandt, Manet, and Degas.  It was the most valuable museum theft in history.  The Rape of Europa is about the plunder of art treasures from territories occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II.  (If you’re interested in more, you can read about five of history’s most notable art thefts here, including the Gardner Museum heist.)

Stolen (2006)
Rebecca Dreyfus, director

The Rape of Europa (2006)
Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen, Nicole Newnham, directors

Many fiction films have been about art thefts as well.  They run the gamut from one of today’s featured films, below, to the infamous bomb known as Hudson Hawk (1991).   Perhaps the most successful was Topkapi (1964), with Melina Mercouri and an Oscar-winning Peter Ustinov.  Others include How to Steal a Million (1966), a comedy with Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole, directed by William Wyler; Once a Thief (1991), from John Woo; Entrapment (1999), with Sean Connery and (in a prominent way) Catherine Zeta-Jones; The Score (2001), a worthy effort, with Edward Norton and the two Vito Corleones, Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando; and Ocean’s Twelve (2004), featured here recently.  Also, a couple I have no opinion on:  Kevin Spacey’s Ordinary Decent Criminal (2000) and last year’s direct-to-video The Maiden Heist (the distributor went under and couldn’t afford a theatrical release), with Morgan Freeman, Christopher Walken, and William H. Macy.

Our theme this week
Heist films

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968, 1999)

The take in the bank heist from the earlier film is $2.6 million in cash.  For the remake, the stolen painting is worth a cool hundred mil.  That’s what inflation will do for you.  But the real question is, Which would you rather have?  Cash, of course, you can spend.  How much is a stolen Monet on your wall worth to you?

Thomas Crown (in the remake) is a billionaire.  He can afford to have a different answer than you.

Steve McQueen created the role for the original (that other movie he did in 1968, just before Bullitt).  Crown is a sportsman and he’s in it for the game, not the money.  The character, like the movie, has style to burn.  If you’re looking for depth, there’s not a lot there, but the surface appearances are pretty to look at.  The visual signature of the film is the split screen technique used for some scenes.  It had the look of something new at the time, though the effect never quite caught on.  Today (like certain zoom shots) it looks either novel or dated, depending on how you feel about it.  The sensibility of the film is very much the ’60s, and its devil-may-care attitude helped define a segment of heist movies in years to come.

Thirty years later, the remake borrowed the title, the character, and the central elements of the story—a rich businessman pulling off a daring theft, then having an affair with the beautiful woman investigating the crime.  Pierce Brosnan is Crown, and Rene Russo takes the investigator/love interest role played earlier by Faye Dunaway (Dunaway gets a supporting role in the remake as Crown’s psychiatrist).  The prize of Crown’s pursuit is a masterpiece of Claude Monet’s, which he steals in broad daylight from the Met.  The second time around, the story leads to a different end.  The remake is more tightly written and directed than the original.  It’s a better film, in a way, yet as often is the case with remakes, not as fresh.

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The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Norman Jewison, director
Trailer

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The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Faye Dunaway (at her loveliest), Steve McQueen (at his essence)
The Chess Game

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The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)
John McTiernan, director
Trailer

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The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)
Pierce Brosnan
Monet’s “San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk”…pffft!

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Quote of Note
“What else can we do on Sunday?”
—Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

“It’s a beautiful Saturday morning, John.  What the hell else have we got to do?”
—Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan), The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

…58…59…60.

Friday Minute
No. 121 | June 18, 2010

Take Five

Our theme this week
Movies that provide (a certain) R&R

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   Rio Rita (1942)
Tuesday         —   Rambling Rose (1991)
Wednesday    —   The Rebel Rousers (1970)
Thursday        —   Revolutionary Road (2008)

Red River (1948)

Howard Hawks made most of his movies during the black-and-white era, yet his films are as colorful—and alive—as those of any director in Hollywood history.  His work spans many genres, and though he’d made a few westerns years before, none was near the achievement of Red River, a bona fide classic and his first of five films with John Wayne.  As Thomas Dunson, Wayne played the tyrannical leader of a cattle drive who keeps pushing his men until they mutiny.  The cast includes a young Montgomery Clift and a veteran Walter Brennan.  An unsentimental look at cowboy life, the film features lively performances, sweeping photography, and some heart-pumping action.

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Red River (1948)
Howard Hawks, director
John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Walter Brennan

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Red River (1948)
Howard Hawks, director
Cattle Drive

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Quote of Note
“We brought nothing into this world and it’s certain we can carry nothing out.”
—Thomas Dunson (John Wayne), Red River (1948)

…58…59…60.

Thursday Minute
No. 120 | June 17, 2010

Take Five

Our theme this week
Movies that provide (a certain) R&R

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   Rio Rita (1942)
Tuesday         —   Rambling Rose (1991)
Wednesday    —   The Rebel Rousers (1970)

Revolutionary Road (2008)

Just a hunch, but I don’t think Richard Yates used to watch Leave It to Beaver, or Ozzie and Harriet, or Father Knows Best, or Make Room for Daddy.  Domestic problems with easy answers were not his strong suit.

Yates was a brilliant chronicler of 1950s suburban anxiety, and Revolutionary Road, his first novel (and National Book Award finalist), was at last adapted for the big screen by director Sam Mendes and an excellent cast in 2008.  Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are Frank and April Wheeler, a young married couple struggling to escape the emptiness of their perfect lives, with Michael Shannon stealing a few scenes as the troubled son of a friend daring to speak the truth.

If the mythic TV view of 1950s life is too much for you, Revolutionary Road is the bitter antidote.

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Revolutionary Road (2008)
Sam Mendes, director
Trailer

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Revolutionary Road (2008)
Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, Richard Easton, and Michael Shannon

 

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Quote of Note
“If being crazy means living life as if it matters, then I don’t mind being completely insane.”
—April Wheeler (Kate Winslet), Revolutionary Road (2008)

…58…59…60.