SYNOPSICS
Thieves' Highway (1949) is a Greek,English,Italian movie. Jules Dassin has directed this movie. Richard Conte,Valentina Cortese,Lee J. Cobb,Barbara Lawrence are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1949. Thieves' Highway (1949) is considered one of the best Drama,Film-Noir,Thriller movie in India and around the world.
The soldier Nick Garcos returns back home from the war very happy, with gifts for his parents Yanko and Parthena Garcos and money in his pocket to open a business and marry his girlfriend Polly Faber. Out of the blue, Nick realizes that his father has lost both legs. Yanko, who was a truck driver, says that he was cheated by a dealer, Mike Figlia, in a San Francisco market when he delivered a truckload of tomatoes but was not paid. He believes that his accident was caused by Figlia's gangsters. Yanko also says that he then sold the truck to a driver named Ed Kinney who has not paid him. Nick meets Ed and says that he will take back the truck, but Ed proposes a deal with apples, where they may earn a great amount of money. Nick invests his savings in another truck and buys apples from a Polish farmer. They need to drive directly to the market in San Francisco without sleeping to keep the fruit fresh; but Ed's truck has problem with its axle, and Nick arrives first. Mike Figlia hires ...
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Thieves' Highway (1949) Reviews
A movie like this keeps the doctor away
Thieves' Highway opens with a view of sunny Fresno, California, a hay cart passing in the foregroundnot the setting you'd expect for a film noir. But as this movie shows, the business of transporting and selling fruit and vegetables is as cut-throat and corrosive as any criminal enterprise. Directed by the soon-to-be-blacklisted Jules Dassin and starring left-wing Group Theater veterans Lee J. Cobb and Richard Conte, Thieves' Highway is really an expose of the rotten heart of capitalism; everyone in the movie is obsessed with making a buck. The central symbol is apples: nourishing and wholesome, corrupted when they are equated with money. A Polish farmer, enraged at being paid less than he was promised for his apples, flings boxes of them off a truck, screaming, "Seventy-five cents! Seventy-five cents!" When the truck later runs off the road, careens down a hillside and explodes, there is a haunting, silent image of the scattered apples rolling down the slope. When the hero finds out that money-grubbers have gone out to collect the dead trucker's load and sell it, he begins kicking over crates of apples, fuming, "Four bits a box!" The hero is Nick Garcos, a navy veteran who returns home to find that his Greek immigrant father has lost both legs in a trucking accident caused by a crooked produce dealer named Mike Figlia. Bent on revenge, Nick teams up with a trucker named Ed to haul the season's first Golden Delicious apples to San Francisco, where he'll be able to track down Figlia. There's an evocative montage sequence of the grueling overnight drive, at the end of which Nick arrives at the produce market, already bustling before daybreak. Figlia spots him and immediately plans to cheat him as he did his father. He hires a local prostitute, Rica, to distract Nick while he steals his load. Meanwhile Ed, having trouble with his truck, is still hours away. Figlia's plans go awry when Rica falls for Nick, and Nick turns out to be tougher and quicker on the uptake than his father. Prone to issuing threats such as, "Gyp me and I'll cut your heart out," he squeezes fair payment out of Figlia and excitedly calls his girl-next-door fiancée to meet him so they can get married, despite his obvious attraction to Rica. Nice girl Polly turns out to be even more interested in money than the prostitute. Figlia's methods turn increasingly violent, leading to a showdown with Nick in a roadhouse. Most of Thieves' Highway was filmed on location in Frisco's produce market and nearby waterfront, gritty and vibrant settings bustling with trucks and pushcarts and shouting men, dripping produce, ashcan fires, crowded diners and seedy bars. The film's acting has the same visceral naturalism, from Lee J. Cobb's crass, blustery, hypocritical thug to Millard Mitchell's tough-as-nails trucker. Richard Conte brings a stunning physicality to his role as a hot-headed yet intelligent man who is easily the world's most elegant truck driver. He uses his intense gaze and graceful movements to charismatic effect and reacts to his surroundings with vivid sensuality. The high point and heart of the movie are the sexy scenes between Nick and Rica. Often confined in her small bedroom, they circle each other warily, alternating between barbed hostility and explosive passion. During their first kiss, they look a few seconds away from getting into serious trouble with the Hays Office. When Nick initially resists her advances, Rica taunts him, "What's the matter, don't you like girls?" "Sure I like girls," he replies, "I always wished I had a kid sister, wearing pigtails down to here You were somebody's kid sister once." Escaping from the cliché of the whore with a heart of gold, Valentina Cortese is a mercurial blend of playfulness, hurt and defiance. She displays open lust for Contedigging her nails into his bare chest, rubbing her dark curls in his facethat is rare for the forties. Contrary to the pattern in many noirs, in Thieves' Highway lust does not corrupt, as greed does. It belongs with the life-affirming, humane side of the movie: with Nick's warm and loving immigrant parents, with Ed's unexpected decency when he saves Nick's life after a roadside accident, with the beautiful vision of the Polish farmer's orchard and its bounty of fresh golden apples.
Beautiful, Haunting, Heartfelt Noir
I've seen hundreds of noirs and this small character study is one of the very best. If Dassin's simple but heartfelt story of betrayal and redemption doesn't tug at you hard, you must be made of stone. The acting triumvirate of Conte, Cortez and Cobb has never been better. I get angry just thinking about Cobb's brilliantly callous performance as the deceptive chiseler who destroys lives to make an extra buck. Cortez is subtle sexuality incarnate but she displays real range and sensitivity as the one who first destroys Conte's life then ultimately redeems it. The always reliable Conte is absolutely at his best as the desperately driven truck driver who sets out to right a terrible wrong but soon learns that you can't beat the system. The last shot of the fruit rolling down the hill has to be one of the most evocative and heartbreaking in all of noir. Tiny budgeted movies sometimes suffer in translating reality, but much of HIGHWAY appears to have been shot on location, particularly in the produce warehouses, shoddy back alleys and winding country roads, which adds a ton of authenticity. The story takes about 15 minutes to get going, but from there it delivers amazing power and emotion. For decades it was one of those buried low budget classics almost impossible to find, but thankfully a couple years ago it finally got the DVD release it deserved. Trust me on this one, noir fans... Thieves' Highway is a haunting trip down a rocky road you want to take.
So Much for the American Dream
Richard Conte plays a hot head recently returned from the Navy, who jumps in on a business deal out of personal vengeance when he finds out that a crooked produce dealer (played in a characteristically tiresome performance by Lee J. Cobb) not only cheated his father, but also caused him to lose use of his legs in an auto accident. He teams up with Millard Mitchell (giving a wonderfully gruff performance) to deliver a load of apples to Cobb in San Francisco. But Conte finds out that the dirty dealings surrounding the produce market in the big city are plentiful, and he and Cobb begin a cat and mouse game to see who can swindle who. And just to complicate matters, an enigmatic gamine (played by Valentina Cortese) shows up and takes a hankering to Conte. Is she playing him straight, or is she part of the whole corrupt mess? Director Jules Dassin uses the rather mundane premise -- delivering a load of apples to a fruit market -- to frame a haunting and striking chronicle of one man's nightmare journey from the cosy confines of small-town America to the jangling, sinister and shadowy worlds of its urban jungles. **POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD** Though Dassin gives us a happy ending, it's a qualified one. After all, Conte turns his back on his devoted girl and his family to join the denizens of the city, and chooses the allure of the "worldy" vamp over that of the pristine virgin. In an America shaken up by WWII and desperately wanting to believe in the white picket American dream, this bitter pill of a film suggests that that dream isn't for everyone. With Jack Oakie and Joseph Pevney as a pair of rival apple sellers, who bring some nice shading to their supporting plot line. Grade: A
Dassin on a roll!
Beginning with his compelling "Brute Force" ('47)followed by the richly atmospheric "Naked City" ('48), Jules Dassin became the hottest dealer in Hollywood of the Film-Noir genre. "Thieves Highway" adds ethnic tensions to the Dassin stew of lost souls always living at the edge of danger. Richard Conte was at his peak here as the tough trucker, quick to throw a punch when he's threatened and equally capable of rolling with them if necessary. In Robert Siodmak's "Cry of the City," he's held in a headlock by a butch Hope Emerson; in this one, a jack gives way and a truck fender lands on his neck....ouch! Conte, like Burt Lancaster, came from a streetwise background that, second only to a boxing ring, fitted him neatly as a glove when it came to movies like "Thieves Highway." Conte was so good in this, he was selected to repeat the role on TV six years later under the title "Overnight Haul" on the old 20th Century-Fox Hour. As for Dassin, he had yet a fourth fling at the genre the following year with the claustrophobic thriller, "Night and the City." A film worth commenting on later. As for "Thieves Highway," having seen it, you may want to follow it up with Clouzot"s "Wages of Fear," made three years later and the ultimate truckers' movie. As a boy I was privileged to have seen all four Dassin movies during their original releases. How thrilling to see "Thieves Highway" and "Night and the City" now out on DVD!
Everyone likes apples - Except doctors.
Thieves' Highway is directed by Jules Dassin and adapted to screenplay by A. I. Bezzerides from his own novel Thieves' Market. It stars Richard Conte, Valentine Cortese, Lee J. Cobb, Barbara Lawrence, Jack Oakie and Millard Mitchell. Music is by Alfred Newman and cinematography by Norbert Brodine. A war-veteran returns to the family home to find his father has been left wheelchair bound by a amoral produce dealer in San Francisco. Swearing revenge he sets himself up as a truck driver and heads off to Frisco with a truck load of Golden Delicious apples... Revenge, hope and desperation drives Dassin's intelligently constructed noir forward. It's a film very much interested in its characterisations as it doles out a deconstruction of the American dream. The familiar noir theme of a returning war-veteran kicks things off, with Nico Garcos (Conte) finding a crippled father and a money hungry bride to be waiting for him; welcome home sailor! From there Dassin and Bezzerides push a revenge theme to the forefront whilst deftly inserting from the sides the devils of greed and corruption of the California produce business. The trucks journey is brilliantly captured by the makers, both exciting and exuding the menace of the hard slog for truckers. Once Nico and his partner, Ed Kinney (Mitchell), get to Frisco and encounter bully business boy Mike Figlia (Cobb), underhand tactics come seeping out and the appearance of prostitute Rica (Cortese) into Nico's life adds a morally grey area that pings with sharp dialogue exchanges. Real location photography adds to the authentic feel of the story, and cast performances are quite simply excellent across the board. The code appeasing ending hurts the film a touch, inserted against Dassin's wishes, and there's a feeling that it should have been more damning with the economic tropes; while the fact that Nico's father is more concerned about being robbed of money than losing the use of his legs - is a bit strange to say the least. However, from a graveyard of tumbling apples to the fact that more than money is stolen here, Thieves' Highway is sharp, smart and engrossing stuff. 7.5/10