Thieves' Highway

This was a pretty good film noir - nothing spectacular - involving a crooked trucking boss, "Mike Figlia" effectively played by Lee J. Cobb who was good at playing nasty villains. In this story, a young trucker, "Nick Garcos" (Richard Conte) whose father was ruined by Cobb, goes after him to settle the score. Nick drives up north to San Francisco to seek him out but has some rough going himself, until the end.

This had interesting characters and a different type of female lead in European actress Valentina Cortese, who was good film noir material.

The story moves pretty fast with few, if any, lulls, yet seems longer than it's 93 minutes. I found this was one of those films I liked a lot better the first time than the second, lowering my rating. It's definitely still a film to check out if you're a film noir fan.

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.

The soldier Nick Garcos (Richard Conte) returns back home from the war very happy with gifts for his parents Yanko (Morris Carnovsky) and Parthena Garcos (Tamara Shayne) and money in his pocket to open a business and get married with his girlfriend Polly Faber (Barbara Lawrence). Out of blue, Nick realizes that his father lost both legs and Yanko, who was a truck driver, tells that he was cheated by the dealer Mike Figlia (Lee J. Cobb) in the San Francisco's market when he delivered a truckload of tomatoes and was not paid. He believes that his accident was provoked by Figlia's gangsters. He also tells that he sold the truck to a driver named Ed Kinney (Millard Mitchell) that has not paid him.

Nick meets Ed and tells that he will bring the truck back, but Ed proposes a deal with apples, where they may earn a great amount. Nick invests his savings in another truck and buys apples from a Polish farmer. They need to drive directly to the market in San Francisco without sleeping to keep the fruits fresh, but Ed's truck has problem on its axle and Nick arrives first. Mike Figlia hires the Italian whore Rica (Valentina Cortesa) to distract Nick but she falls for him and tells that Mike is robbing his cargo. Mike is forced to share his selling with Nick and her earns a large amount. Then he calls Polly and asks her to meet him to get married, and Rica tells to Nick that Polly is only interested in his money. When Nick is robbed by Mike's gangsters, he learns who really loves him. But Nick still has to settle the score with Mike.

"Thieves' Highway" is another great film-noir by Jules Dassin in a period of the post-war ruled by gangsters and corruption. Nick Garcos begins the story happy and expecting to get married with his girlfriend and ends a dark character in love with a prostitute with a heart of gold. The direction and performances are top-notch and the story is realistic. The sequence with the uncontrolled truck without brake in the highway is impressive. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Mercado de Ladrões" ("Thieves' Market")

I have stumbled over the works of Jules Dassin only lately, first the atmospheric and gripping "Night and the City" and now "Thieves Highway", something you would certainly label a sociological drama today. Rchard Conte as a guy out on the mission to avenge the death of his brother and the crippling of his father from indirectly the hands of a corrupt fruit market guy. Wonderful acting by all main people, Richard Conte, Lee J Cobb, Millard Mitchell, and the Italian actress who never made it to a status that i can recall her name without checking the credits again... Dire portrait of the fight for existence of the trucker guys, the ways the retailer controls both ends of the supply chain and the mean and dark ways in a big market. Vegetables and fruits may just be a metaphor for something else, you see.... If you can get it on cable or DVD, don't let it pass by.

Thieves' Highway opens with a view of sunny Fresno, California, a hay cart passing in the foreground—not the setting you'd expect for a film noir. But as this movie shows, the business of transporting and selling fruit and vegetables is as cut-throat and corrosive as any criminal enterprise. Directed by the soon-to-be-blacklisted Jules Dassin and starring left-wing Group Theater veterans Lee J. Cobb and Richard Conte, Thieves' Highway is really an expose of the rotten heart of capitalism; everyone in the movie is obsessed with making a buck. The central symbol is apples: nourishing and wholesome, corrupted when they are equated with money. A Polish farmer, enraged at being paid less than he was promised for his apples, flings boxes of them off a truck, screaming, "Seventy-five cents! Seventy-five cents!" When the truck later runs off the road, careens down a hillside and explodes, there is a haunting, silent image of the scattered apples rolling down the slope. When the hero finds out that money-grubbers have gone out to collect the dead trucker's load and sell it, he begins kicking over crates of apples, fuming, "Four bits a box!"

The hero is Nick Garcos, a navy veteran who returns home to find that his Greek immigrant father has lost both legs in a trucking accident caused by a crooked produce dealer named Mike Figlia. Bent on revenge, Nick teams up with a trucker named Ed to haul the season's first Golden Delicious apples to San Francisco, where he'll be able to track down Figlia. There's an evocative montage sequence of the grueling overnight drive, at the end of which Nick arrives at the produce market, already bustling before daybreak. Figlia spots him and immediately plans to cheat him as he did his father. He hires a local prostitute, Rica, to distract Nick while he steals his load. Meanwhile Ed, having trouble with his truck, is still hours away. Figlia's plans go awry when Rica falls for Nick, and Nick turns out to be tougher and quicker on the uptake than his father. Prone to issuing threats such as, "Gyp me and I'll cut your heart out," he squeezes fair payment out of Figlia and excitedly calls his girl-next-door fiancée to meet him so they can get married, despite his obvious attraction to Rica. Nice girl Polly turns out to be even more interested in money than the prostitute. Figlia's methods turn increasingly violent, leading to a showdown with Nick in a roadhouse.

Most of Thieves' Highway was filmed on location in Frisco's produce market and nearby waterfront, gritty and vibrant settings bustling with trucks and pushcarts and shouting men, dripping produce, ashcan fires, crowded diners and seedy bars. The film's acting has the same visceral naturalism, from Lee J. Cobb's crass, blustery, hypocritical thug to Millard Mitchell's tough-as-nails trucker. Richard Conte brings a stunning physicality to his role as a hot-headed yet intelligent man who is easily the world's most elegant truck driver. He uses his intense gaze and graceful movements to charismatic effect and reacts to his surroundings with vivid sensuality. The high point and heart of the movie are the sexy scenes between Nick and Rica. Often confined in her small bedroom, they circle each other warily, alternating between barbed hostility and explosive passion. During their first kiss, they look a few seconds away from getting into serious trouble with the Hays Office. When Nick initially resists her advances, Rica taunts him, "What's the matter, don't you like girls?" "Sure I like girls," he replies, "I always wished I had a kid sister, wearing pigtails down to here…You were somebody's kid sister once." Escaping from the cliché of the whore with a heart of gold, Valentina Cortese is a mercurial blend of playfulness, hurt and defiance. She displays open lust for Conte—digging her nails into his bare chest, rubbing her dark curls in his face—that is rare for the forties. Contrary to the pattern in many noirs, in Thieves' Highway lust does not corrupt, as greed does. It belongs with the life-affirming, humane side of the movie: with Nick's warm and loving immigrant parents, with Ed's unexpected decency when he saves Nick's life after a roadside accident, with the beautiful vision of the Polish farmer's orchard and its bounty of fresh golden apples.