Review #1,116: 'Thieves' Highway' (1949)

Thieves' Highway was the penultimate American film director Jules Dassin made before finding himself banished from Hollywood and placed on the infamous Blacklist. Informed in 1948 of his fate but handed enough time to squeeze out Night and the City (1950) for Fox, Dassin was just one of many cinema giants cut down in their prime (although he would go on to make the masterpiece Rififi in France in 1955), and the bruising film noirs he made during this period were some of the finest the genre has ever seen. Thieves' Highway's world of the produce market may not seen the ideal setting for American's own brand of stylish brooding, but this is one of the toughest and darkest noirs out there.

Nico 'Nick' Garcos (Richard Conte) returns home from the war to find his father crippled after a road accident which resulted in the loss of his legs. After demanding the truth, Nick learns that the crash occurred after his father made a deal with unscrupulous market dealer Mike Figlia (Lee J. Cobb) and was run off the road. Seeking vengeance, Nick first of all demands back the truck his father sold to Ed Kinney (Millard Mitchell), but instead ends up going into business with him on a load of in-demand Golden Delicious apples. Following a 36-hour truck drive, Nick arrives in San Francisco and almost immediately find himself at odds with Figlia. Exhausted, Nick is cared for by good-heated prostitute Rica (Valentina Cortese) while Figlia shrewdly plunders his stock.

Cortese's performance is the beating heart of the movie. A well-rounded, decent person at odds with the shifty-eyed criminals that pepper the marketplace, she is magnificent in the role, a shining light in the midst of an entourage of shady characters. This includes Conte's lead, who while eager to do the right thing at first, soon sees terrible, naive decisions force him into desperate measures. The produce market, with its battered, growling trucks and beaten-down drivers, provides a perfect noir setting. You can hear the cogs of capitalism and industry grind as the underpaid blue-collared types risk life and limb for the chance of a payday. It's littered with the same sense of pessimism and cynicism that made Dassin's Brute Force (1947) such a powerful movie, and will leave you feel somewhat beaten down by the time it's over. American noir at its toughest.


Directed by: Jules Dassin
Starring: Richard Conte, Valentina Cortese, Lee J. Cobb, Millard Mitchell, Barbara Lawrence
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #608: 'Jour de Fête' (1949)

With Jour de Fete, French genius Jacques Tati began exploring many themes that littered his quite wonderful career. The plot is, like many of his works, very simple and is centred around one very basic idea - here the bumbling postman Francois, played by Tati. The small rural town of Sainte-Severe-sur-Indre is visited by a travelling fair, who bring joy and colour to an otherwise quiet area. Francois goes quietly about his business under the nose of the village-folk who hardly seem to notice him, apart from when they're making fun of him or getting him drunk. After seeing a documentary showing the advanced methods of postal delivery in the U.S., Francois makes use of everything around him to make his own service as fast and efficient as in America.

Clocking in at only 70 minutes, this is certainly Tati's least ambitious project, but he was very much honing his craft (this was his directorial début). His reputation as the Antonioni of slapstick is evident, as Tati feels just as comfortable watching the simple and natural interaction of the village's inhabitants in the quite beautiful rural landscape, as he is falling on his arse. Tati barely appears for the first twenty minutes or so, which is relatively laugh-free, but these early scenes are important in understanding the point of the film. By having such a calm and naturalistic opening, Francois' desperate struggle to meet the demands of a society relying increasingly on technology becomes all the more ridiculous. And there lies the satire, something that he explored more head-on and ambitiously in Playtime (1967).

Not to say Jour de Fete is without ambition, as Tati was so dedicated to his craft that he shot the film on two cameras - one with standard black-and-white photography that was the norm in 1949, and one with Thomsoncolour, a quite primitive and experimental colourising process. Thomsoncolour went bust before the film was released, and Tati was forced to release the black-and-white version that circulated for years. Tati's daughter Sophie Tatischeff and cinematographer Francois Ede managed to release the film in it's original colour in 1995, but the film looks grainy, damaged and diluted. Yet it's nice to think that Tati thought his work and vision was too grand for black-and-white, and he's right. Although this is by far the least laugh-out-loud of Tati's work that I've seen, there is plenty here to hint at the genius to come, namely the quite brilliant final few frames that has an excited child running after the leaving fair, gradually shrinking in the distance.


Directed by: Jacques Tati
Starring: Jacques Tati, Guy Decomble, Paul Frankeur
Country: France

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie