The Burglar (1957)

The Age of Commercialism

Fantastic!

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

As others have noted, the script is not well written.It's a good example of what can happen when a novelist adapts his own work for the screen. When it comes to editing, authors just hate having to kill their darlings, and so it was with Goodis leaving in those numerous dreadfully long monologues, which might be acceptable in a novel where the plot plays out in the reader's mind, but are inexcusable in a movie where the rule is 'show it, don't tell it'.Unless dialog moves the plot forward it needs to be excised.Goodis gave the director some real challenges, and what we end up with are characters not able to look at each other but instead stare without emotion while they babble on interminably about themselves, stopping the action dead.Otherwise the plot, apart from some logic holes, is a good one, and typical of Goodis.Casting is another problem for me. Mansfield's acting is simply atrocious. Durea is a fine performer but having to act like and say that his age is 36, when in fact he is and looks almost 50, jars.Peter Capell chews the scenery trying to depict Baylock.Stewart Bradley (Charlie) personifies evil. I enjoyed his performance. I think Goodis writes best when he's writing for the villain of the piece.

Three burglars steal a valuable necklace before encountering the proverbial web of deceit.The movie's a highly uneven work, reminding me as much of Kubrick's The Killing (1956) as the arty flashes of Welles and others. Clearly director Wendkos is reaching for an artistic style, but unlike Kubrick, Wendkos imitates more than he originates. Plus he's working with a ham-handed screenplay that lacks the clarity and flow of Kubrick's classic racetrack caper. Unfortunately, the narrative here tends to stumble along rather than evolve. For example, note the holes in just how the crooked cop puts his operation together, and how he knows as much as he knows. Nonetheless, the opening ten minutes covering the jewel theft is very effective, showing real promise. But the fluidity soon lapses.On a lighter note, I can't help but notice (like another reviewer) Mansfield's unusually bushy eyebrows that undercut her good looks. I'm wondering if they were natural and later pared back by a studio make-over or whether they resulted here from a myopic make-up man. In fact, without all the studio glamorizing of later years, I hardly recognized her.Anyway, for all its shortcomings, the movie remains a generally interesting curiosity that also affirms an unusual moral. Namely, that there can be more honor among thieves than among cops. Something Kubrick also knew.

This is one of those extravagantly stylized late-period noirs, one which palpitates with flamboyant cinematic technique. It belongs in the same club as those other exaggerated, self-consciously arty noirs of the late 50s/early 60s, like Touch of Evil, Kiss Me Deadly, Blast of Silence and Sam Fuller's contemporaneous contributions to the genre. Wendkos directs like a recent A+ film school graduate showing off every Hitchcock and Welles trick he's learned -- there are many stunning edits (he is also credited as the film's editor), several strikingly composed shots, and a suitably seedy background (the fact that the crooks' hideout is right next to a railway line full of speeding streamliners is a boon). At the same time, he toes the studio line of narrative clarity and cohesive action scenes enough to make this suitable viewing for the non-buff (one can see why he spent most of his years in television, but at the same time could dazzle with over-the-top effects in The Mephisto Waltz.) Fans of Atlantic City's Steel Pier are in for a treat in the film's climax (which owes a bit too much to The Lady from Shanghai) -- we even get to see the diving horse. But notably, we also see the soggy marshes that border the city and reflect the protagonists' own situational quagmire. It may not have the integrity of the more subtly devastating noirs of the Siodmak 40s, but it has its own postmodern tradition to uphold. It's worth picking this one up even on the third-generation dupes that are now in circulation; a wide-screen dvd restoration is definitely in order.

I saw this film a long time ago and was tremendously impressed, almost hynotized, by its technique. It was directed by Paul Wendkos, who's since gone on to a successful career in television, but who was for a while considered an up and coming director of movies. The stars, Dan Duryea and Jayne Mansfield, never quite achieved the kind of success many had envisioned for them. Duryea's career was sidetracked by Richard Widmark, and Mansfield never replaced Marilyn Monroe. Part of the charm of this film is watching small timers play small timers in a small movie that didn't cost a lot of money and which few people saw or want to see because no one connected with it is famous (though Jayne has her fans I guess). To make matters worse, the film is arty, full of offbeat camera angles and strange lighting that sometimes makes people look startled, as if they're continually having their picture taken. It's a tawdry tale about little people with big problems, and it works. For all I know it could be a work of art. The story is mostly about a jewel robbery, but it's also about the strange, almost incestuous relationship between Dan and Jayne, which both does and doesn't have a whole lot to do with jewels. There is a very bad guy involved who comes across like a young Senator Joe McCarthy. There are scenes in an amusement park; and more scenes in an empty stadium. I'm not sure why. The films is dazzling and ambitious and pretentious, so much so that it's beyond mere film noir as such; it's more like art noir.