/View.info/ In 1950, American director John Huston signed an act of his own surrender. He creates a film about the world behind the metal bars of the prison. To a great extent, this is groundbreaking cinema. The director is influenced by the techniques of Italian neorealism, the penetrating stories instilling some hope.
However, there is no hope in Huston’s film. He shows the world in all its abomination, irreparability, a world in which everything is animal. In fact, he showed the zoo-society.
From the screen the phrases: “We all work for our vices”; “Crime is the main way to achieve success”; “They (criminals) are not that different from us.”
Interestingly, censorship in those years imposed strange requirements: criticizing the system was forbidden; to show that criminals can escape retribution, neither can; but to treat reality as hell and complete hopelessness – that can…
(Russian language)
Crime as a way to achieve success
The first century of Hollywood.
THE ASPHALT JUNGLE
In 1950, John Huston signed an act of personal surrender. He created a film that depicts the human world as a prison with steel bars.
If two years earlier, in Key Largo, he argued with noir, with its hopelessness, then at the turn of the decade he rushed along the black road ahead of the locomotive. He made a brilliant film that shouts: “Farewell to my rosy illusions!”
The script is based on William Burnett’s “hard-boiled detective”. It was the story of a robbery whose plan looked flawless in the mastermind’s mind.
“Professor” Riedenschneider knew how to walk into a jewelry store after closing and take out a million dollars worth of jewelry. He prepared for the case with German thoroughness – he provided for everything down to the smallest detail. However, reality made adjustments to the wonderful plan, and the matter, similar to an easy evening walk, ended in disaster for everyone who got involved in it.
It was a pity for the guys, because they were good-looking. The “Professor” was a gentle, polite man. The bugbear was a concerned family man. The driver is a sympathetic and kind-hearted guy who protects street cats. And the strongman is a simple-minded provincial, obsessed with horses. Each of them had problems: the “professor” had not touched a woman for seven years, the safecracker’s child was sick, the driver had a hump, and the strong man was deeply nostalgic for his native farm with horses.
I even felt sorry for the scoundrel lawyer who promised to buy stolen goods and then declared that he had no money. He looked like a victim of love. The blond ingénue, played by Marilyn Monroe, wiped out his accounts.
It was also a pity for the scoundrel bookmaker who invested in the project and then betrayed his friends, unable to withstand a small execution.
The only things I didn’t feel sorry for were the corrupt “cops” and the private detective who decided to rob the robbers.
The criminals who were captured or died either went to work for the last time, believing that it would allow them to quit, or they hoped to solve the accumulated problems. They tried to escape from the cage. Some already saw themselves in a cozy chalet in Mexico, and others at their home ranch in Kentucky. “I’ll stick my head in the pond to wash away all the filth of the city,” the strong man promised his girlfriend.
However, the cage turned out to be more than just strong. There was no way out of it.
Huston created innovative cinema in many ways. The techniques of Italian neorealism, under the influence of which he fell, added depth to the story. But this movie took away hope. It showed a world saturated with abomination, incorrigible, bestial. Essentially, it showed a zoocium.
The title of the film sounded like a sentence. Phrases flew from the screen: “We all work for our vices.” “Crime is a rudimentary way to achieve success.” “They (criminals) are not so different from us.”
What happened to the director, who considered himself, if not “red,” then “pink”? Everything suggests that exactly the same thing happened to him as happened to Dalton Trumbo.
Houston was the bad boy in the eyes of the federal commission. He created the Committee to Protect the First Amendment. At a meeting of the Directors Guild, he spoke out in favor of a secret voting method. And this, it was believed, was a purely communist demand. After all, a true patriot votes openly.
In 1947, Houston was not pressed. The director had defenders in the House Un-American Activities Commission. But a new trial was being prepared, and he could not help but see that the madness was growing.
That is why, it seems, Houston chose a project that justified him in the eyes of the authorities. He created a tough, hopeless movie that a communist simply could not produce. “Red” would give peace a chance. He wouldn’t curse him. He would have given up hope. But she wasn’t here.
The monologue of the police boss in the finale, inserted at the request of the censors, did not change anything for the better. He whitewashed the police, but not the world, which has become a jungle, where without law enforcement people will tear each other to pieces.
It is interesting that censorship in those years made strange demands. It was impossible to criticize the system. It was also impossible to show that the criminals escaped retribution. But it is possible to show reality as hell and complete hopelessness.
Huston’s film struck the same note of sympathy for criminals as Trumbo’s Gun Crazy. And this also could not be an accident. The deeper you study noir, the more clearly you see that everything in it happens as if on command: with a whistle, black cinema begins, with a whistle it changes, with a whistle it ends.
Houston obviously hoped that the curve would work out, that it would somehow work out. Alas, the director miscalculated. He miscalculated just like Trumbo. He was soon pulled out for interrogation, after which he decided to move to Europe.
#Crime #achieve #success
