Brilliant and touching

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

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.

THIEVES' HIGHWAY is one of the earliest road movies and, no two ways about it, one of the best. Jules Dassin surprises again with his own unique way of approaching a scene (the opening scene between Conte and his father, for example, or the scene where Conte lies pinned beneath his rig). Like WAGES OF FEAR, THIEVES' HIGHWAY never veers too far off course and we're along for the ride, riding shotgun- the best place to be in a road movie. Lee J. Cobb is on hand, warming up for his role in ON THE WATERFRONT, and my favorite scene in THIEVES' HIGHWAY is the barroom brawl, wherein Conte hammers Cobb senseless beneath a framed picture of Heavyweight Champion Bob Fitzsimmons. (Having earned a very meager living as a cab driver, I can relate to Conte's character's plight: when I collapsed in a service station parking lot one night- from a medical condition I didn't know I had, called "occult blood"- I had a guy try to pick my pocket quite literally while I was flat on my face. I stopped him by grabbing his wrist. He released my roll of bills- mostly ones- and kicked me in the head. There's ALWAYS somebody waiting to take advantage of a man when he's down...) (Prior to that, I'd written a three-day novel titled HACKS about cab-driving that could've served as the basis for a low budget independent feature itself.)

This is rich and wonderful, one of the most atmospheric noir. With it, Dassin takes his place next to Welles as a master of that form. Whereas Welles emphasized the fictional embroidery being woven with stories inside stories, Dassin commits himself to a single dynamic brushstroke of life. Welles fused a narrating eye into the places it dictates, Dassin fuses place (which he essayed in Naked city) with character, masterfully so.The idea is that a man has come back from the sea to the waking world of strife and deceit, a sailor. He's a stand-up guy who wants to do what's good, right wrongs. All through the film, he is a voice for reason and justice. He is Greek, perhaps to emphasize this struggle for order and light mixed with proud violence that defines the Greek experience through time. We could make the case that the Odyssey is an early noir text, all about a schmuck tossed by amused gods in seas of cosmic mishap.Our guy has come back to this noir world of mishap and machinations. The entire film is that ironic laughter of the gods that snuffs the light. Everywhere he goes some seemingly divine joke is already at play, anticipating him; seeking him as the victim of fate. Right from the first scene where the frolicking of his return is suddenly silenced by the revelation of his father's accident; notice too the ritual mask he's brought back and scares his girlfriend with it, foreshadowing deceit and ritual games.Something has masked itself from him, from his point of view, to the world of accident and human evil. Trucks are always about to give out. Flat tires obstruct him. The truck collapses on him crushing his neck. The whole world is conspiring against him, a definitive attribute of noir but seldom done with such clarity and penetrating force. Exhausted by the long journey, he's always on the verge of sleep. He passes out half a dozen times, entries to the hallucinative night where some other machine cranks out the world.In San Francisco, he has his tire slashed, a prostitute seduces him out of the street so the insidious fruit peddler can sell off his valuable cargo of apples. In the fruit market, everyone is trying to strike bargains, to outwit the other as if to snuff him from existence. His trucker partner who is the one hope of light in all this is continuously obstructed on the road. His money, won with so much bravado, is stolen in a minute. Worst of all; he has no way of knowing that the prostitute that he's grown fond of wasn't in on the theft. He has to go on faith alone. The film should have made a big deal of this, a question of faith as what sets the world back on its orbit.In the end we have clean resolutions. In a more abstract rendition, we'd never know just who stole his money, remember moments earlier he was yelling it on the phone in a roomful of drunk strangers. We'd never truly know if she was in on it, having to go on faith ourselves.Either way, this is masterful stuff folks, up there with Out of the Past and Lady from Shanghai in the ecstatic thrust of self.Noir Meter: 4/4

Jules Dassin's last American production would be this adaption of A.I. Bezzerides novel about the slimy dealings in the wholesale produce market. After Thieves Highway, Dassin would do Night And The City in London and then be subject to the blacklist. As it is Thieves Highway is a remarkable film with a couple of interesting subplots.Returning home from the war Richard Conte finds his father Morris Carnovsky crippled, the result of a trucking accident and robbed of the money for recently delivered produce to Lee J. Cobb the man in charge of San Francisco's wholesale market. Conte decides to take some vengeance out and get the money his father was robbed of. In order to do this Conte goes into partnership with Millard Mitchell an old time trucker who now has Carnovsky's truck which has seen better days. When Conte arrives with a delivery of needed apples for the market, Cobb pays him off all right, but gives him the same kind of treatment he gave dad. A little something extra with femme fatal Valentina Cortese.The main plot involves Conte and Cobb, but woven into the story is that of Conte's engagement to Barbara Lawrence which takes a jolt when she meets Cortese. Also Jack Oakie and Joseph Pevney play a pair of scavenger drivers who follow Mitchell in his beat up truck waiting for something to befall him.Trucking wholesale fruit and vegetables is shown to be a dog eat dog business and top dog is Lee J. Cobb. His part here is almost a dress rehearsal for the waterfront racketeer he played in On The Waterfront. In a cast of good performances Cobb is also top dog.Thieves Highway is a wonderful film that dates not one bit because things you see here still go on.

Nick (Richard Conte), a young WWII veteran returning to his roots in California, seeks revenge against Mike Figlia (Lee J. Cobb), a greedy, cigar-chomping produce buyer in San Francisco who injured Nick's working-class father, a trucker who can no longer haul apples from California orchards to market.The plot follows Nick as he sets out on his revenge mission. In typical noir fashion, it's a hostile universe Nick enters, as he teams up with another wildcat trucker in an uneasy alliance. He must deal with highway fatigue, mechanical problems, thugs, and manipulative people along the way. Money is the symbol of evil that underlies the story, and Nick's narrative journey highlights the peril of trusting others.The film's structure starts out familial and normal, but transitions to a dark, menacing world of oncoming headlights, a produce market with its noise and clutter, wet brick streets at night, and cheap, seedy interiors. With strong side lighting, and a maze of light and shadow, combined with high, wide-angle camera shots and explicit framing, the B&W cinematography conveys a sinister, uninviting world typical of the noir genre. There's also a distortion of time, as Nick's not-so-excellent adventure in San Francisco unfolds through one seemingly endless night.Richard Conte gives a really fine performance, as does Lee J. Cobb, and Valentina Cortese, who plays the femme fatale whom Nick meets at Figlia's market. My only major complaint is the inclusion of several truckers other than Nick, which muddles the story a tad.Mostly, "Thieves' Highway" paints a grim picture of life among blue-collar workers during the 1940s, trying to make a buck amid harsh conditions and greedy, manipulative scoundrels. Thematically proletariat, it's comparable to the work of writers such as John Steinbeck and films like "The Grapes of Wrath". The film offers genuine drama, tension, excellent acting, and good noir visuals.