#34 — The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950)
It’s all right there in the name of the film: the promise of soot and grit and anger, the heat of savagery played out on pavement, the hardness of untamed wild disguised as urban civilization. There are few cinematic titles as instantly evocative of of the bleak storytelling to which it is affixed. The Asphalt Jungle technically conveys nothing of the film’s plot, its characters, its timeframe. Hell, it takes some imagination to tie the title to the film’s setting. And yet it carries forward everything that the film is about, all its gunpowder horrors and bruised authority. It is a crime drama. Of course it is. It is about a criminal called Doc (Sam Jaffe), fresh out of jail and immediately seeking out collaborators for a jewel heist. He assembles his team, each with his own clearly defined role, one freshly recruited crook suggesting another, always with the assurance that trust is a precious commodity and this new guy is the only guy who can do the job and not crack under pressure or pull off a double-cross. If there’s honor among thieves, it damn well doesn’t come automatically or even easily. Multiple stabbings in a series of backs isn’t a guarantee either, but every one of them is white-knuckling the hilt of a blade.

The Asphalt Jungle was first a novel, written by W.R. Burnett. The screenplay was adapted by Ben Maddow and John Huston, the latter also serving as the director. Huston was closing out his first decade as a helmer, and he had the language of cinema down. He understood the mechanics of narrative and clearly preferred keeping the material lean and tough. He is interested in the psychology of his characters, but also avoids getting mired in it. There are no justifications or overt attempts to extend any sympathy towards his characters. These are bad men. Thus, they do bad things. They can’t be trusted because they aren’t trustworthy. To a large degree it’s as simple as that. With the likes of James Whitmore and that great snarling elm tree Sterling Hayden in the cast as the gang members, there’s not a lot of opportunity for actorly nuance anyway. These aren’t people making art. They’re making a picture. Of course, the modesty of their goals is a major part of what actually elevates The Asphalt Jungle to the rarefied air of artistry.

This is what American film noir looks like when the gallows humor and luscious seduction is stripped away, leaving only the rusting steel girders beneath. Huston was no expert in the world he depicted, spending his sickly childhood in boarding schools as his performer father toured the vaudeville circuit, but he had an instinctual feel for the city’s harsh rhythms. Especially in the early part of his career, Huston was ferociously good at depictions of criminality and duplicity, none of it presented with the commonplace Hollywood sense of high drama, meant to make it look more nefarious but usually serving to soften the impact of what was onscreen. Huston pushed back against the studio’s concerns about the brutality of his stories, his sensibility, his images. He wanted his films, his pictures, to be truthful. More often than not, he achieved just that. The Asphalt Jungle is as real as well-scarred knuckles.