Danger in Frisco

Movie
German title	Danger in Frisco
Original title	Thieves' Highway
Country of production	United States
original language	English ; Italian ; Greek ; Polish
Publishing year	1949
length	94 minutes
Age rating	FSK 16
Rod
Director	Jules Dassin
script	AI Bezzerides
production	Robert Bassler
music	Alfred Newman
camera	Norbert Brodine
cut	Nick De Maggio
occupation
	Richard Conte : Nick Garcos; Valentina Cortese : Rica; Lee J. Cobb : Mike Figlia; Barbara Lawrence : Polly Faber; Jack Oakie : Slob; Millard Mitchell : Ed Kinney; Joseph Pevney : Pete; Morris Carnovsky : Yanko Garcos; Tamara Shayne : Parthena Garcos; Hope Emerson : Midge;

Thieves 'Highway (original title: Thieves' Highway ) is a in black and white twisted American film drama and film noir by Jules Dassin from the year 1949 . AI Bezzerides wrote the screenplay based on his novel Thieves' Market.

action

Nick Garcos, son of Greek immigrants, returns to California to live with his family and fiancée Polly after many years at sea . There he learns that his father, a truck driver, was not only robbed of his money by the fruit dealer Mike Figlia, but also lost his legs in an accident. Nick's father sold his truck to his neighbor Ed, but he has not yet paid. Nick agrees a deal with Ed: Together they want to buy two truckloads of apples from a local fruit grower and sell them at the fruit market in San Francisco at a profit. On their heels are Slob and Pete, who are also on their way to the fruit market with a load of apples. On the way, Ed saves Nick's life when he is almost crushed by his car while changing a tire. Nick is the first to reach the market, where he is promptly tricked by Figlia: one of Figlia's employees makes Nick's car unfit to drive, and while Nick is distracted by the prostitute Rica, Figlia sells his cargo to customers on his own initiative. However, Rica quickly feels sympathy for Nick and tells him about Figlia's machinations. Nick is able to force Figlia to pay out his winnings and that night calls Polly to come to San Francisco to marry him. Shortly thereafter, two thugs hired by Figlia ambush Nick and Rica and take his money. While Nick is recovering at Rica, Ed has an accident with his truck. Slob and Pete reach the market and sell their goods to Figlia for below price. Figlia can persuade Pete to help him recover Ed's delivery in order to monetize it as well. Slob, on the other hand, refuses to enrich himself with the dead person.

The next morning, Polly arrives in San Francisco, but turns away from Nick when she learns that Nick has lost all of his fortune. Nick looks for Figlia and meets Slob, who tells him about Ed's death and the recovery of his cargo. Nick confronts Figlia in a pub and beats him up. Shortly afterwards, the police called by Rica arrive, arrest Figlia and give Nick a warning. Rica joins Nick and follows him to his hometown.

background

Danger in Frisco premiered on September 20, 1949 in the United States and opened in German cinemas on December 19, 1950 .

Darryl F. Zanuck , Vice President of the production company 20th Century Fox , oversaw the production of the film in every detail as usual. Without Dassin's knowledge, he had a scene shot and inserted in which Nick Garcos is instructed by a police officer after his attack on Figlia that it is not the job of private individuals, but the police, to ensure that the law is upheld. The film was Dassin's last work on American soil for almost 20 years. Since his former membership in the Communist Party was under investigation, Zanuck let him shoot his next film, The Rat of Soho , in the UK .

Although initially classified as a melodrama , in later years danger in Frisco was largely, if not unanimously, assigned to the film noir canon.

analysis

For the BFI Companion to Crime , in Danger in Fricsco , in contrast to Bezzerides' earlier trucker film At Night , the state of the film noir takes on a political awareness: “The trauma that inevitably deforms the noir hero is not on the outside located like the violence of a war, but a situation within American society that forces men to conform to the laws dictated by capitalism . ”The exhibition catalog Reading California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900–2000 adds:“ Danger in Fricsco […] implies that at every point in the production chain the dream of the worker's success is jeopardized by weakness, accidents and systematic exploitation. Here California is not a golden dream come true [...] but the simple statement of the fact that dreams are worth less than hopeless imprisonment in oppression and exploitation. ”The film gives the impression that a happy ending, including the one shown here, can only be imagined as an artificial, forced, fairytale-like resolution. It was precisely this optimistic conclusion that led Bill Nichols in Movies and Methods , based on Robin Wood's division into “ reactionary ” and “ progressive ” horror films , to classify Frisco as “ right-wing ” representatives of film noir, along with films like Gilda , and the films as victims of the underworld and rat nests are dichotomous .

Reviewer Glenn Erickson sees Fricsco as a subtle call to organize instead of fighting alone as an individual: “Nico only fails because he is alone in the fight against the gang of thugs. Since he, Ed and Ed's ex-partners Slob and Pete compete with each other, they are easy prey for the traps that are set for them - Figlia buttons each other. Danger in Fricsco never mentions the word union , but the embarrassed look on the traitor Pete's face when Figlia condescendingly offers him a lousy day laborer says it all. I can imagine that trade unionists loved this film even more than Bezzerides' earlier trucker hero film Night Out . "

Brian Neve rates the film in his book Film and Politics in America as a less successful implementation of the underlying themes and substantiates his point of view with reviews from Barry Gifford and Colin McArthur. The script suggests a broader criticism, but provides a reassuring ending with the presentation of a villain who is overthrown. Dassin shows the tension and film noir exoticism of the script, but has little to add to the content. In an analysis of Dassin's city without mask and danger in Frisco, Georg Seeßlen describes both films as haunting, but qualifies: “Dassin's fascination with the city also threatened to overgrow the analytical aspects laid out in the scripts, and the films he [ ...] shot in Europe, only reinforced the tendency towards the picturesque that was already present in American films [...] "

Reviews

"One of the best, most astute and tightest melodramas of the year, breathtakingly played by a cast in top form."

- Bosley Crowther , The New York Times

"AI Bezzerides' script [...] and the acting performances of Conte , Cobb and Cortese (in their American debut) help to curb Dassin's heated artistic ambitions [...] The film seamlessly blends slippery eroticism and hard action into a first-class trucker melodrama together."

- Time Out Film Guide

“An exciting film that permanently questions the" American dream "; credible in conveying the milieu and stylistically committed to neorealism . "

- Lexicon of international film

literature

AI Bezzerides: Thieves' Market. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1949.

Web links

Thieves' Highway in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Danger in Frisco. on Turner Classic Movies

Individual evidence

^ Danger in Frisco in the Internet Movie Database .
^ ^A ^b Danger in Frisco in the Lexicon of International Films .
↑ Interview with Jules Dassin on the DVD release of Thieves' Highway, Criterion Collection , USA 2005.
↑ Additional material on the DVD release of Night and the City. Criterion Collection, USA 2005.
↑ ^a ^b "And here, furthermore, in this exposure, which is stunningly played by a top-form cast, is one of the best melodramas — one of the sharpest and most taut — we've had this year." - Review in New York Times on September 24, 1949, accessed December 22, 2012.
^ "Top of the list of melodrama which 20th Century-Fox [sic] has been releasing lately." - Announcement In: The Montreal Gazette. October 18, 1949, accessed December 22, 2012.
↑ For example, Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward in Film Noir include him in film noir. An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style. Overlook / Duckworth, New York / Woodstock / London 1992, ISBN 0-87951-479-5 and Foster Hirsch: The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir. Da Capo Press, New York 2001, ISBN 0-306-81039-5 . Bruce Crowther describes it as only “marginally” attributable to film noir: film noir. Reflections in a dark mirror. Virgin, London 1988, ISBN 0-86287-402-5 .

^ 1n contrast to earlier thrillers with a truck-driving theme (They Drive by Night), Thieves' Highway finds the noir sensibility taking on a political ambience. [...] The locus of the trauma which necessarily malforms the noir hero is not external like the violence of war but an endemic condition of American society, which forces men to go along with the set of rules imposed by capitalism. - Phil Hardy (Ed.): The BFI Companion to Crime. University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles 1997, p. 323.

^ "Thieves' Highway chronicles the stages of capitalist production – from the harvesting of produce to its consumption in the restaurants of the state – and implies that at every point in the chain of production, the worker's dream of success is vulnerable to weakness, to accident, to systematic exploitation. California here is not the golden achievement of a dream (as the hero discovers when even his radiantly blond girlfriend deserts him) but the blunt realization of the fact that dreams matter less than inescapable entrapment in oppression and exploitation (this, despite the fact that Thieves 'Highway has a happy ending, since even the cheerfully hokey, tacked-on conclusion – Thieves' Market, the book on which the film is based was much bleaker – seems to imply that an optimistic outcome can only be artificial, a forced magical solution ). ”- Stephanie Barron, Sheri Bernstein, Ilene Susan Fort (Eds.): Reading California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-2000. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles and University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 2000, p. 140.

↑ "One of Wood's most interesting elaborations of this thesis involves the delineation of reactionary and progressive sides to the horror film genre, as his comparison of The Omen and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre demonstrates. A similar dichotomy may well exist in film noir between the right-wing films, such as Gilda and Thieves' Highway , that continue to offer hope and films, such as DOA and Kiss Me Deadly , that deny any possible escape. "- Bill Nichols : Movies and Methods Volume II. University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles 1985, p. 195.

^ "Nico fails only because he's one man against the rackets. Competing with one another, he, Ed and Ed's ex-partners Slob and Pete are easy prey for crooked traps - Figlia picks them off one by one. Thieves 'Highway never mentions unions, but the look of Judas-like shame on Pete's face as Figlia patronizes him with a rotten handout job tells it all. I can see the Teamsters loving this picture even more than writer Bezzerides' older trucker-hero picture , They Drive By Night. “- Review by Glenn Erickson on dvdtalk.com, accessed December 22, 2012.

↑ "Bezzerides remembers being frustrated by Zanuck's demands for script changes, and the resulting film was less documentary realism than – in Barry Gifford's review – 'a typical proletarian melodrama that pits one earnest man against an exploitative, corrupt businessman attempting to control a marketplace' . The script at times suggests a broader critique, but also provides a villain - the 'produce dealer', played by Lee J. Cobb - who divides and rules, but whose eventual downfall contributes to the reassuring ending. Dassin points up the excitement and film noir exoticism but, as Colin McArthur argues, he adds little to any thematic statement implicit in the script. "- Brian Neve: Film and Politics in America: A Social Tradition. Routledge, London, New York 1992-2005, p. 122.

↑ Georg Seeßlen: The asphalt jungle. History and mythology of the gangster film. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1980, pp. 180-181.

^ "AI Bezzerides 'script (from his own novel Thieves' Market ) and the performances of Conte, Cobb, and Cortese (in her American debut) help restrain Dassin's feverish artistic ambitions in this tale of racketeering in the California fruit markets. The result slots sleazy eroticism and rigorous action seamlessly together into a high-grade trucking melo. "- Time Out Film Guide, Seventh Edition 1999. Penguin, London 1998, p. 906.

[imdb-1] Danger in Frisco in the Internet Movie Database .

[ldif-2] A ^b Danger in Frisco in the Lexicon of International Films .

[3] Interview with Jules Dassin on the DVD release of Thieves' Highway, Criterion Collection , USA 2005.

[4] Additional material on the DVD release of Night and the City. Criterion Collection, USA 2005.

[nyt-5] "And here, furthermore, in this exposure, which is stunningly played by a top-form cast, is one of the best melodramas — one of the sharpest and most taut — we've had this year." - Review in New York Times on September 24, 1949, accessed December 22, 2012.

[6] "Top of the list of melodrama which 20th Century-Fox [sic] has been releasing lately." - Announcement In: The Montreal Gazette. October 18, 1949, accessed December 22, 2012.

[7] For example, Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward in Film Noir include him in film noir. An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style. Overlook / Duckworth, New York / Woodstock / London 1992, ISBN 0-87951-479-5 and Foster Hirsch: The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir. Da Capo Press, New York 2001, ISBN 0-306-81039-5 . Bruce Crowther describes it as only “marginally” attributable to film noir: film noir. Reflections in a dark mirror. Virgin, London 1988, ISBN 0-86287-402-5 .

[8] 1n contrast to earlier thrillers with a truck-driving theme (They Drive by Night), Thieves' Highway finds the noir sensibility taking on a political ambience. [...] The locus of the trauma which necessarily malforms the noir hero is not external like the violence of war but an endemic condition of American society, which forces men to go along with the set of rules imposed by capitalism. - Phil Hardy (Ed.): The BFI Companion to Crime. University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles 1997, p. 323.

[9] "Thieves' Highway chronicles the stages of capitalist production – from the harvesting of produce to its consumption in the restaurants of the state – and implies that at every point in the chain of production, the worker's dream of success is vulnerable to weakness, to accident, to systematic exploitation. California here is not the golden achievement of a dream (as the hero discovers when even his radiantly blond girlfriend deserts him) but the blunt realization of the fact that dreams matter less than inescapable entrapment in oppression and exploitation (this, despite the fact that Thieves 'Highway has a happy ending, since even the cheerfully hokey, tacked-on conclusion – Thieves' Market, the book on which the film is based was much bleaker – seems to imply that an optimistic outcome can only be artificial, a forced magical solution ). ”- Stephanie Barron, Sheri Bernstein, Ilene Susan Fort (Eds.): Reading California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-2000. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles and University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 2000, p. 140.

[10] "One of Wood's most interesting elaborations of this thesis involves the delineation of reactionary and progressive sides to the horror film genre, as his comparison of The Omen and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre demonstrates. A similar dichotomy may well exist in film noir between the right-wing films, such as Gilda and Thieves' Highway , that continue to offer hope and films, such as DOA and Kiss Me Deadly , that deny any possible escape. "- Bill Nichols : Movies and Methods Volume II. University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles 1985, p. 195.

[11] "Nico fails only because he's one man against the rackets. Competing with one another, he, Ed and Ed's ex-partners Slob and Pete are easy prey for crooked traps - Figlia picks them off one by one. Thieves 'Highway never mentions unions, but the look of Judas-like shame on Pete's face as Figlia patronizes him with a rotten handout job tells it all. I can see the Teamsters loving this picture even more than writer Bezzerides' older trucker-hero picture , They Drive By Night. “- Review by Glenn Erickson on dvdtalk.com, accessed December 22, 2012.

[12] "Bezzerides remembers being frustrated by Zanuck's demands for script changes, and the resulting film was less documentary realism than – in Barry Gifford's review – 'a typical proletarian melodrama that pits one earnest man against an exploitative, corrupt businessman attempting to control a marketplace' . The script at times suggests a broader critique, but also provides a villain - the 'produce dealer', played by Lee J. Cobb - who divides and rules, but whose eventual downfall contributes to the reassuring ending. Dassin points up the excitement and film noir exoticism but, as Colin McArthur argues, he adds little to any thematic statement implicit in the script. "- Brian Neve: Film and Politics in America: A Social Tradition. Routledge, London, New York 1992-2005, p. 122.

[13] Georg Seeßlen: The asphalt jungle. History and mythology of the gangster film. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1980, pp. 180-181.

[14] "AI Bezzerides 'script (from his own novel Thieves' Market ) and the performances of Conte, Cobb, and Cortese (in her American debut) help restrain Dassin's feverish artistic ambitions in this tale of racketeering in the California fruit markets. The result slots sleazy eroticism and rigorous action seamlessly together into a high-grade trucking melo. "- Time Out Film Guide, Seventh Edition 1999. Penguin, London 1998, p. 906.