L'Espion

Tense dark drama made in 1952 at the height of the Cold War about the shadowy world of espionage without a word of dialog makes "The Thief" a one-of-a-kind film.

Dr. Allan Fields, Ray Milland, has been spying for the Soviets by passing top secret documents from his position as a scientist at the Atomic Energy Commission, the AEC, to them. One afternoon in New York City one of Field's contacts is struck by a car and killed while he had in his possession a tin canister of microfilmed documents that Fields had given him. When the FBI finds out that the documents came from the AEC in Washington D.C they start to check out all those that are employed there and Fields seeing that the noose was closing in on him becomes a man on the run.

Good acting and great photography of Washington D.C and New York City with a dramatic and heart thumping action chase scene on top of the Empire State Building and the 86th floor observation deck that rivals the final moments of the movie "King Kong". The film also has something that was lacking in most spy movies at that time; a believable ending that wasn't overly contrived. Ray Milland showed in "The Thief" that he was as good a silent actor as a speaking one.

If you can get through the first 15 minutes or so of this film, you're in for a real treat. Once the film gets going, its quite enjoyable, with scenes shot in Washington DC, Times Square, and most notably, the Empire State Building back when it was the tallest skyscraper in the world. The scenes on the 88th floor are beautifully shot, an then we get to travel higher to the 102nd floor and beyond. Anyone who loves New York will love this stuff. As a film, the gimmick of no dialogue works fairly well, though there are some scenes where it just doesn't seem natural that nobody would say anything (Milland's encounter with Gam at the flophouse screams for dialogue). But Milland carries it off for the most part and makes "The Thief" well worth a look.

This is a pretty ambitious noir film that dared to tell its story without a single line of dialogue. It's plot is a bit hokey: a nuclear scientist who had agreed to pass on information to a fiendish band of communists (are there any other kind?) has second thoughts and must allude himself from their grasp. The film combines a wonderful mix of claustrophobic scenes of tension where our (anti)hero holes himself up in a small room while the phone rings menacingly (conjuring memories of Milland's brush with fear and paranoia in THE LOST WEEKEND), and terrific cat-and-mouse chase scenes that are truly Hitchcockian, including a climax on the top of the Empire State Building (how come Hitch never came up with that one?). Ray Milland does a terrific job as usual: one can almost hear his thoughts. And the cinematography is some of the most innovative you'll ever see outside an Orson Welles film. Don't get caught up in the idea that this is a 'gimmick' film. This is an innovative film, much in the same vein as some of the most inventive shows in THE TWILIGHT ZONE series. Try to open your mind to a fresh perspective and you won't be disappointed.

Why haven't I heard of this movie before? Not a single word spoken, yet every detail of the mental torture that Ray Milland endures as a seemingly unwilling Soviet spy is conveyed by his features and demeanor. Film review books call it tame, pretentious, uninspired. I suspect those reviewers (this means you, Lenny Maltin) have never actually watched "The Thief."

The noir cycle generated many curios but none odder than this. Russell Rouse (who had just done D.O.A.) decided to direct an espionage drama that falls just short of 90 minutes without containing a single word of dialogue. It's not silent, however: footsteps echo on the cobblestones of Georgetown and the floors of the Library of Congress, cameras click over hush-hush documents at the Atomic Energy Commission, telephones ring (but are never answered). There's also a good score. The espionage concerns thermonuclear secrets, so this film would fall into the sub-category of the Anti-Commie propaganda film, except for the fact that the lack of words allows for no preaching; the skullduggery is all but abstract. And the silence can be seen as expressing the deep, deep underground of the cold-war spy. Questions remain: Ray Milland always does well with this sort of recessive, basically self-loathing character, but why engage an actor with such a distinctive voice to keep his trap shut? And Rita Gam, in her screen debut, has little to do but strike any number of provocative poses and suck sultrily on her cigarette (the "temptation" she poses to Milland is never resolved). The Thief has enough going for it to keep one's attention, but it's an experiment that would have been more welcome had 15 or 20 minutes been shorn off its running time.