Scott44 ***Great summary by imogensara_smith ("A movie like this keeps the doctor away", imogensara_smith from New York City, 5 June 2006). Meanwhile, McGonigle ("Bravo", McGonigle from bean world, Massachusetts, 4 December 2006) has interesting thoughts about Nick's mental state at the film's end.***"Thieves Highway" (1949, Jules Dassin), Where film noir and Golden Delicious apples meet, is extremely gritty and suspenseful. Appearing a year before Dassin is blacklisted by the House un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), it depicts capitalism as an all-but-universal corrupter. With the lone exception of the protagonist, every character is seen destroying another for profit. The titanic struggle for working people to get ahead in a rigged game resonates today.War-veteran Nick Garcos (Richard Conte) comes home bearing presents for his family and somewhat tall girlfriend Polly (former model Barbara Lawrence, 5'8"). He learns that his formerly wildcatting father has been recently crippled by the perfidy of a Frisco-based produce market dealer, Mike Figlia (Lee J. Cobb). Headstrong and possessing a bad temper (when wronged), Nick partners up with occasionally unscrupulous, hard-boiled Ed (Millard Mitchell) to each drive a truck loaded with Golden Delicious apples from a particularly sun-kissed orchard to the Frisco market. Nick wants to do business with Figlia in order to make money and avenge his father at the same time. Unfortunately, Nick does not fully understand the depth to which Figlia employs murderous thugs to undermine business deals.There is a lot to enjoy. The performers are all excellent. Conte brings a physicality to Nick that is evident with his smoldering eyes, cat-like movement and athletic build. Lee J. Cobb, in a role that reminds many of his later appearance in "On the Waterfront (1954)", is perfect as the cigar-chomping, duplicitous produce dealer. There is always money to be made crossing unsuspecting saps and Lee J. Cobb seems to have known this from birth. Valentina Cortese is remarkably effective as the occasional Italian prostitute Rica, who is as street-wise as she is sensual. After being hired by Figlia to distract Nick from his load of apples, she double-crosses Figlia and becomes Nick's best ally. She helps Nick negotiate the tricky San Francisco underworld, a brutal environment that Nick's rarefied fiancé, Polly, could never acclimate to. The scenes between Nick and Rica in Rica's apartment are often beautifully realized. The moment where the pair play tic-tac-toe with their fingers on Nick's chest is really sexy.The screenplay (by A. I. Bezzerides who adapted his own novel) really breathes; i.e., events change at a believable pace, as seen by the length of screen time before Figlia begins appropriating Nick's apples. I love how vital the market scenes are, as Dassin's camera is normally stationary while the background is filled with people and objects in motion. Some reviewers believe that Dassin is showing his antipathy towards capitalism by making the audio and visuals from the early market scenes "noisy", as if to portray it as an assault on the senses. However, there is one particular image that everyone remembers from "Thieves." The much-discussed sight of apples tumbling down a steep hill after the truck that was carrying them has crashed is uniquely profound. Again, many will find an anti-capitalist message here. Clearly Dassin is commenting on the sheer destruction of countless lives in the pursuit of monetary gain.Speaking of double-crosses, executive producer Darryl Zanuck is known to have included (and personally directed) the final shot, without Dassin's knowledge. Zanuck also altered the roadhouse showdown between Nick and Figlia by including surprisingly uncorrupted police officers, one of whom is laughably from a different universe than every other character.) Also, Star Trek fans will want to notice Joseph Pevney as Pete. (Pevney later became one of Star Trek's principal directors.) "Thieves Highway" is a top-shelf noir, and an absolute must-see for Cinephiles. However, if you are driving an over-loaded big-rig to the revival theater showing this, it is recommended that you have slept within the last 36 hours and that your universal joint is not being held up by wire and spit.

blanche-2 Richard Conte travels on "Thieves Highway," a 1949 film also starring Lee J. Cobb, Valentina Cortese, and Barbara Lawrence. Directed by Jules Dassin, it's the story of Nick Garcos (Conte), who returns from the war to find his father has lost his legs in a car accident. It wasn't just any car accident. His father, Yanko (Morris Carnovsky) had dealings with a corrupt dealer, Mike Figlia (Cobb), when he delivered a truckload of tomatoes. Figlia claimed that he paid Yanko, but on the way home, Yanko was in a terrible accident, and Figlia says that Yanko just doesn't remember. In truth, the accident was rigged by Figlia's thugs to avoid paying him.Yanko has sold his truck and wasn't paid for that either, so Nick goes to the new owner, Ed (Millard Mitchell) to retrieve it so that he can confront Figlia. Ed instead proposes that Nick accompany him in another truck to deliver a shipment of apples. Nick takes the money he was planning to use to start his life with Polly (Lawrence) and gets another truck. They have to drive nonstop to San Francisco to keep the fruit fresh.Nick arrives first, and Figlia arranges for a hooker (Cortese) to distract him so that he can steal the merchandise.In a strange way, this film reminded me of "The Wages of Fear" in that it's about danger on the road - in this case, a different kind of danger - but danger nonetheless. It's about growing up fast, holding onto what you have, and realizing what you want, and those two may not be the same; and about fighting for what's right.Terrific performances abound here - the angry Conte, the ruthless Cobb, and the conflicted Cortese. This is an excellent post-war noir, gritty and realistic, that shows the hard life of the working man trying to hold onto what little is his. Another winner from Dassin.

Lechuguilla 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.

ackstasis Nick Garcos (Richard Conte) returns from a round-the-world engagement to a home that, at first glance, typifies the ideal American household. His father's working-class singing voice booms across the backyard; his mother fussily busies herself with the daily chores; his girlfriend Polly (Barbara Lawrence) bursts jubilantly into the room, embracing him in a passionate, sensuous kiss. But looks can be deceiving: a well-intended gift of Chinese slippers betrays a recent family tragedy; Polly's disappointed response to another gift hints at a fractured romance, a relationship borne not from love but the love of money. The family's facade of happiness is exposed as a sham, and it's the peeling back of this superficial skin with which Jules Dassin's 'Thieves' Highway (1949)' is concerned. A seemingly-innocuous industry, that of fresh fruit cartage and wholesale, is shown to wallow in depravity, thuggery and callous opportunism. In this way, the film might be considered a companion piece to the director's previous effort, 'The Naked City (1948),' which similarly exposed gruelling drama within the confines of the audiences' daily lives.Richard Conte was one of the most interesting leading men of his era. His big-shot crime boss in 'The Big Combo (1955)' might be the decade's most charismatic villain, but he could also play the resolute hero, as in Preminger's 'Whirlpool (1949).' To 'Thieves' Highway' he brings a cocky self-assurance, the sort of fearless conviction that's bound to blow up in one's face eventually. Lee J. Cobb's conniving fruit wholesaler, Mike Figlia, is a small-time crook, but one who invokes the viewer's contempt through his ruthlessly-capitalist exploitation of the humble working-class American. Only the females aren't as memorably drawn: Barbara Lawrence's Polly is rather abruptly discarded as a self-seeking gold-digger, as though only to allow for a romance with possible prostitute Rica (Valentina Cortesa), who grows a heart of gold. 'Thieves' Highway' no doubt inspired Henri-Georges Clouzot's nail-biting 'The Wages of Fear (1953),' another classic tale of trucking peril, but unfortunately it itself lacks the French director's gritty cynicism, or at least a degree of pessimism as absolute as Clouzot's.This slackening of tone is seen most tellingly in the film's dramatic climax, a confrontation between Garcos and Figlia. The sequence doesn't work because it's conflicted between two opposing moral viewpoints. In one sense, Dassin appears to advocate Garcos' vigilante action in subjecting Figlia to a physical beating, since he successfully reclaims his stolen payments and achieves some degree of mental closure regarding his father's crippling. However, at this moment, as Garcos collapses onto the bench in exhaustion, policemen enter the diner and arrest Figlia for his crimes – but not before one officer sternly wags his finger at Garcos for taking the law into his own hands. To have an excellent film intruded upon by such an awkward, juvenile moral lesson is bad enough, but the film could have gotten across the same message in a more powerful manner. As the police stormed into the diner, my blood had suddenly run cold with the chilling thought: what if Figlia is dead? Out of pure bloody-minded pride, a good man would have been condemned for life, the ultimate testament that vigilantism is not the answer.