Rent Thieves' Highway (1949)

The weed of crime bears bitter fruit - Thieves' Highway review by Count Otto Black

This is not far off being a superb film noir. Unfortunately it has two major defects. The first is Richard Conte. He's not much of an actor, a deficiency he tries to make up for by being incredibly manly; the trailer actually spells out to us in letters which on a cinema screen would have been enormous how VIRILE he is! I suppose he is, but he's so busy being dead butch that he just comes across as smug. He also appears to be extremely stupid. See how dense he looks in most of those stills? I'm not surprised he ended up playing the kind of supporting characters who weren't required to make the audience like them, because he's lousy at it.

The other problem is a weirdly schizoid plot. Although it starts off being about long-distance truck-drivers, the hero soon reaches his destination and the rest of the film concerns his feud with an evil greengrocer. (Yes, really!) Except that there's another character who literally gets left behind by the main plot, and almost seems to be in another unrelated movie we occasionally catch glimpses of which is much more light-hearted than the one our hero is in, until the two plot-threads come together at the end, and characters who are at least borderline comical very abruptly find themselves in the kind of film where people die in nasty ways.

Valentina Cortese as the tart with a heart is so much better than Conte that I wished the movie had been about her struggle to free herself from a lifestyle she hates with the help of a tough but gullible trucker she at first cynically manipulates but soon comes to genuinely care for. Unfortunately it's about him and his quest for revenge, which, although he has a very compelling motive, doesn't make the slightest sense because his cunning plan seems to consist of tempting the baddie to blatantly rob him, thus making it OK to beat him up. Actually I'm not sure he has a plan at all, since he wanders around being repeatedly swindled and duped until something which the villain wasn't in fact responsible for finally makes him angry enough to take decisive action.

The supporting cast are extremely one-dimensional. Lee J. Cobb's cheerfully insincere and utterly despicable fruit and veg wholesaler gets away with it because Cobb's trademark style is to play everyone much larger than life. But most of them are wacky stereotypes whose involvement in genuinely horrible situations feels very wrong indeed (it doesn't help that one of them looks incredibly like 50% of Ant and Dec). And some of them are more than slightly annoying. It's about halfway to being a truly great movie, but it doesn't seem to quite know what it's about, and ends up getting into a bit of a muddle.

Gripping - Thieves' Highway review by sb

FILM & REVIEW Another cracking Jules Dassin movie which once again is shot entirely on location. Conte plays Nick who returns from the war to discover his truck driving Dad has been paralysed in an accident and has been ripped of by a fruit merchant in San Francisco. Nick hears of a deal to transport freshly ripe apples to the same dealer and with his new partner Ed (Mitchell) drives the 400 miles down the coast. On the way both trucks break down and have blown tyres and although Nick is unsure of Ed at first the two reach an understanding. Nick arrives first and haggles on the load with Mike Figlia (J Lee Cobb) who tries to barter him down and has him distracted by a local hooker (Cortese)but she falls for Nick and reveals Figlia’s plan to rip him off. Figlia initially agree to pay in full but has Nick mugged and robbed of his money…. Meanwhile Ed is nursing his increasingly unstable truck over winding mountain roads….. It’s absolute gripping….who knew transporting fruit could be this dangerous with great performances throughout. Conte is solid and Cobb does his always terrific snarling turn but it’s Cortese as the tart with the heart that is the real standout. Terrific use of the dockside locations it’s a real overlooked gem - 4/5