La spia

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.

The Thief stands as the first American Film since Charlie Chaplin's City Lights without any spoken dialogue.

Directed by Russell Rouse this 1952 noir is a propaganda film without any of the leaden anti-Communist dialogue that other films of this type contain. In fact the film has no dialogue! It's funny how first impressions stay with you. When I first saw The Thief it was at a Film Noir series at the Film Forum Theater in New York.

The Thief stands out for its special way of objectifying the isolation of the central character with film elements such as mood-inducing lighting, scripting, and especially music.

The lack of dialogue and Ray Milland's marvelous performance visually communicating the angst and secretive nature of the lead character is something to see to appreciate.

What stands out in this film is the lack of dialogue. At the outset this motivates us to watch more closely than if we were given dialogue to help drive the action along.

With its blast of a raining phone in the very first frame of the film as the camera moves over to show us the anxious Allen Fields lying fully dressed on his bed waiting, we understand that sound and sight over spoken language is what will be the currency of this film.

Hats off to Ray Milland and the wonderful score because just as in the early films of the silent period all the plot points of the film are understood trough purely visual means, pushing the film to the level of pure cinema.

The musical score for the film that Herschel Burke Gilbert composed says volumes about the character Allen Fields, and his emotional state.

Gilbert received an Academy Award nomination for his music score for the film and one watching will tell you why. Gilbert creates swells and moods to support the facial expressions and other physical language that Milland utilizes to show us what is happening with Fields and his eroding state of mind.

The dialogue-less film is definitely a stylistic approach to this subject matter. It is very unusual but primarily because we are used to a dialogue-driven plotted film style.

The technique does begin to seem forced into the second half of the film especially in exterior scenes where one would normally hear people talking as ambient sound.

The scenes with the FBI would have some sort of dialogue, especially in those where agents are being prepped on who to investigate.

Once the viewer gets with the approach that the filmmaker is taking though, the lack of dialogue can be understood as part of the overall theme of he voice-less nature of the Spy character in films.

Some things are left unexplained though and this could have been added to create more depth in the story line. We never learn why Fields is stealing secrets for the enemy. Is he being paid? Is there a wife being held captive? These pieces of the puzzle may help. Without them the story feels poetic without substance.

Ray Milland gets extra credit for creating such a memorable performance. His Allen Fields seems cut from the same cloth as his character from The Lost Weekend, angst-driven without solution.

No one can drink whiskey or smoke a cigarette quite like Ray Milland, with his sense of exclusive attitude while simultaneously embroiled in some deep emotional turbulence.

For anyone interested in Film Noir styling taken to exceptionally expressive levels this film will show you things you may not have seen before.

The night exteriors are textbook noir examples of lighting and camera. In this case the ambient sounds of the Washington D. C. locations are contrasted well with those of the New York City locations, especially the wide shot of Milland's Allen Fields arriving in the beautiful Pennsylvania Train Station before it was demolished.

Although the interiors are stage sets there is attention paid to creating surroundings that support the 'silence' of spy Allen Fields especially the cage-like apartment where Fields waits for his final phone call.

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."

Ray Milland is a nuclear physicist who's been selling top secret material to the Russians. His story is told here without dialogue in this very ambitious and rewarding little film. His performance and the film score work well together and keep the viewer's interest. It's amazing how so much can be told without the mechanics of speaking. And, for as many films as I've seen, the chase sequence is one of the most intense I've ever seen, primarily by its use of silence and Ray's intensity. If you've never seen this very unusual film, then you are missing one of the best examples of film noir, buoyed by its distinction of no dialogue, but well makes up for it with its grade-A treatment of the story and its ability to use its surroundings as part of the story. Another Ray Milland winner!

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.