Doc Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe), recently released from prison, enters the city, where crime is rampant, though not successful, and the police are either on the take or suggest beating citizens because rights don’t matter. He has a perfect plan for a big heist, much bigger than the local low-life criminals are used to. It’s too big for the nervous bookie (Marc Lawrence) to fund, so he brings in corrupt Lawyer Alonzo Emmerich (Louis Calhern). Emmerich could use the money, considering his expensive lifestyle, his troubled wife, and his beautiful young mistress (Marilyn Monroe), so he promises to back them. They bring in driver Gus Minissi (James Whitmore), safecracker Ciavelli (Anthony Caruso), and thug Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden). But in this city, they never had a chance, and things go wrong even before the betrayals.
Director John Huston’s previous Film Noir, The Maltese Falcon, created a twisted dark world that was full of evil, but still beautiful. It was a nightmare wonderland. This, his second, is very different. Gone is that exquisite cinematography. In it’s place is the grain of a B-movie showing us a diseased, hopeless world. There’s no beauty here. We’re not through the mirror, but in our own world, just in the ugliest part of it.
Our characters aren’t shining evil either. They are pitiful, sick, and broken. Casper Gutman was searching for a dream. These people are trying to buy a sandwich, but even if they get the money, they are too stupid, too addicted, too proud to pick up that sandwich. If you don’t think about it very hard, and ignore the beatings, you can fantasize that being Sam Spade would be fun. There’s no one here you’d want to be, or meet, or think about for too long. Spade can take an insult because he’s self confident. These folk attack or break down if not shown the respect they clearly don’t deserve.
Yeah, it’s all pretty bleak, but that’s what makes it such a good film. Noir lays out the worst in man and the worst in his world and here it all is: gritty, claustrophobic, tense, and filled with despair. No one in The Asphalt Jungle has the ability to make it in life (however you wish to define that) if given a chance, but that’s OK because they never had one. And that makes them the least bit sympathetic. Yes, they steal and cheat and commit murder, but what else are they going to do?
We follow them through the caper—a rarity at the time as the censors weren’t fond of showing how crimes were committed—and get to know each character surprisingly well. These aren’t one-dimensional thieves. Dix Handley is the lead, and it’s a touch easier to sympathize with him than Emmerich or Cobby or Emmerich’s nasty PI Bob Brannom (Brad Dexter) as he has some sense of loyalty and is afraid of nothing, but he is stupid on an epic scale and it is never clear how much of his mistreatment of Doll Conovan (Jean Hagen)—a girl who might be a prostitute and might be an alcoholic—is due to his having no clue she loves him and how much is due to him just being nasty by nature.
The Asphalt Jungle sings when it is just displaying the stifling hopelessness that life can be, and it would be a top Noir if it stuck with that, but the last act gets a bit conventional (I suspect the production code was a factor), and it ends up being a very good film, instead of a great one.
Of note, this was one of Marilyn Monroe’s earliest movies and she is inhumanly gorgeous. This small part lea to her being cast in All About Eve which led to stardom.