Thieves' Highway - Criterion Collection

Thieves' Highway - Criterion Collection
by Jules Dassin

Thieves' Highway - Criterion Collection
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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Barbara Lawrence, Jack Oakie, Lee J. Cobb, Richard Conte, Valentina Cortese
Director: Jules Dassin
Brand: Image Entertainment
Cinematographer: Norbert Brodine
Editor: Nick DeMaggio
Producer: Darryl F. Zanuck
Producer: Robert Bassler
Writer: A.I. Bezzerides
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Italian (Original Language); English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Special Edition
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 94 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-02-01
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion

Movie Reviews of Thieves' Highway - Criterion Collection

Movie Review: Pulp fiction
Summary: 5 Stars

It's astonishing to consider that Jules Dassin was blacklisted for making supposedly anti-capitalist films like this in 1949. How times had changed from just a decade earlier, when John Ford's adaptation of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath was rightly hailed as a masterpiece. Both films attack the depersonalising excesses of capitalist greed but are also exceedingly pro-American in their little-guy-against-the-system optimism. Less epic in scale than Grapes of Wrath, Thieves' Highway is no less effective, a beautiful example of Dassin's strengths as a filmmaker: attention to fine details of character; an ability to suggest darker layers of society and behavior without being explicit about them (I love how the heroine of this picture is a cheap waterfront hooker, but nobody comes out and says it); a comic touch leavening an essentially grim world view; expressive visuals; and - perhaps most uniquely among noirish directors - a willingness to shamelessly embrace melodrama and emotional excess. Coming in Dassin's career between stylish tours de force like Naked City and Night and the City, Thieves' Highway has artistry that is more subtle, paying more attention to straightahead narrative and less to visuals and atmosphere, although there are set pieces like the truck overturning on the hillside that are quite breathtaking. In short, Criterion has brought to light another great chapter in the critical re-evaluation of this unique filmmaker.

Summary of Thieves' Highway - Criterion Collection

Thieves' Highway is set in the world of "long-haul boys" who drive by night to bring their goods to the markets of America's cities. Ex-G.I. Nick Garcos (Richard Conte) is a tyro trucker bent on satisfaction from the man responsible for crippling his father-ruthless market operator Mike Figlia (Lee J. Cobb). Along the way, he is seduced by siren Rica (Valentina Cortesa) and drawn into the San Francisco produce racket-landing him in a web of treachery and heartbreak. The Criterion Collection is proud to present this Jules Dassin masterpiece, the last film he completed in America before he was blacklisted.
The rugged world of long-haul trucking knits perfectly with classic film noir dynamics in this sizzling, underrated picture. Navy veteran Richard Conte returns home to California, only to plunge into a revenge scenario and a scheme to haul the season's first apples to the teeming San Francisco fruit market (a place seen as a nocturnal jungle for the survival of the fittest). Lee J. Cobb enjoys himself enormously as the chiseling boss at the Frisco market, Millard Mitchell is wry as Conte's angle-playing trucking partner, and Valentina Cortese adds a bright, sexy exoticism to the multi-layered duplicitous dame. Director Jules Dassin, in his last American-shot film before blacklisting, shows his expressive abilities with shadowy interiors and road-movie exteriors alike. The punchy screenplay by A.I. Bezzerides, whose trucking experiences also fueled They Drive by Night, is a textbook case for the complexities of pulp--not apples, fiction. --Robert Horton

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