Huston and Ben Maddow adapted W.R. Burnett's novel in an extremely tight and dramatic.. Hang on - I haven't read W.R. Burnett's novel, so how can I say anything? Also Burnett is a screenwriter too. Huston was a fan and adapted his novel for High Sierra. So that's that sorted out.
It's classic Huston thieves falling apart - you can see it so many of his films from The Maltese Falcon on. The film is made that much more taut by the absence of any music - apart from the opening credits and the very last Kentucky sequence.
Interestingly agent Johnny Hyde features in two stories about this film. Rozsa wrote the (little) music - Huston didn't like his first draft at the prelude and insisted on something quieter and more tense. Hyde represented Rozsa and unknown Marilyn Monroe. Hyde asked Miklos to take her to lunch and see what he thought. The composer found her 'charming and uncomplicated - a normal Hollywood girl who wanted to get into pictures'. Hyde also introduced her to Huston, who sensed she was being set up to go through the casting coach process of getting parts (the odious Sam Spiegel was hovering in the wings), and decided to give her a full, colour screen test and cast her in the fledgling role. He thought she was fine but MGM didn't get it and dropped her. (He much later worked with her again on the tragic The Misfits.)
For me it's Sam Jaffe's picture - he was Oscar nominated and won the Best Actor Prize at Venice (Huston mistakes it for the Cannes award). But all cast good, especially Jean Hagen as the smitten and unloved wannabe girlfriend of Sterling Hayden. With the oily Louis Calhern, James Whitmore, John McIntire (police commissioner, many films including Psycho and Honkytonk Man), Marc Lawrence (This Gun For Hire, The Ox-Bow Incident, Cloak and Dagger, Key Largo, Italian films in the 50s and 60s, then much on TV), Barry Kelley, Anthony Caruso, Brad Dexter.
Oscar nominated photography by Hal Rossen.
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