“The City Under the City” is the tag line for John Huston’s caper film noir, The Asphalt Jungle, probably the best crime film of the 1950s, and one of the most influential. Without Huston’s film, Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) and three remakes would never have appeared, because Asphalt Jungle is one of the best caper melodramas ever produced. It served as a model of its kind for directors like Jules Dassin, whose fabulous heist film Rififi (1954) is considered the “granddaddy of all heist films” (said Leonard Maltin) because its jewel robbery scene is executed in complete silence. Not so in Huston’s film.

The Asphalt Jungle is based on W. R. Burnett’s famous crime thriller and contains excellent dialogue by screenwriters Ben Maddow and John Huston, the director. The dialogue is literally shaped for each character. There is a comfortable use of slang—for example when Dix (Sterling Hayden) says of Cobby (Marc Lawrence), “He tried to ‘bone’ [embarrass] me in front of other people. I don’t like being ‘boned’ like that.” It’s slang that may be dated now, but it sounds just right. And when Doll (Jean Hagen) calls Dix “Honey”—she has been locked out of her room and wants to spend a few days in Dix’s apartment—there is a world of sexual experience behind her use of the word. It is little moments like these that make Asphalt Jungle an atmospheric film, stark in its details, natural and intelligent in its execution of character and plot, brilliant in its black-and-white cinematography, and totally engrossing.

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