Thieves' Highway

Can sheer will and determination enable an idealistic man's pursuit of justice in the underground world of fruit and vegetable exchange, or will they leave him distraught, broke and bedridden? Jules Dassin's Thieves' Highway examines this question and anxiously offers an unexpected solution. Nick Garcos (Richard Conte) returns home after years of working and saving his hard earned cash. Only to discover that his father (Morris Carnovsky) no longer has working legs after an accident coordinated by a crooked produce distributor (Lee J. Cobb as Mike Figlia). This upsets Garcos who immediately sets out to avenge his dad by cutting a deal with a shifty trucker named Ed Kinney (Millard Mitchell). Ed knows the whereabouts of an overflowing apple orchard whose gold and delicious bounty is ready for sale. The two strike up an agreement and purchase a truckload of apples each bound for sale to the aforementioned crook. But along the way, Ed's weathered universal slows his pace and young Nick must learn to negotiate deals with hardened thugs who don't believe in fair play.

On his own.

Not sure if Thieves' Highway is a film-noir or not but some of the classic tropes are in place. Anxiety exists although it's perforated with moments of happiness and peaceful calm. The majority of the film's action takes place in the underground but this underground isn't predominantly destitute. Some members of the police force are honourable, there's a lack of jazz music, the straight-and-narrow fiancé (Barbara Lawrence) turns out to be the femme fatale, and the femme fatale (Valentina Cortese) has a definitive change of heart. Does she only have this change of heart because Garcos represents the second generation of an immigrant family, integrated and successful, and is Dassin saying that only film-noir heroes from ethnic backgrounds can save the troubled femme fatale?

There's a lot going on behind and in-between the scenes in Thieves' Highway and some of the logic's somewhat bizarre. I suppose there's a plot, an internal relationship between the different components maintaining the plot's structure, an external relationship between the plot's structure and established film noir conventions, and another external relationship between the director's interpretation of these conventions (what he's trying to say by employing them in this or that fashion) and the ways in which he uses them to reflect his culture. Things often don't make sense. Check. People like to believe in the integrity of the law. Bingo. A strong constitution will achieve results eventually. Strike. Things can work out between a man and a woman. Cheerio.

Unless Dassin is noiring film-noir by turning its conventions upside down to deconstruct its pretensions and shine a light through its constructive darkness, Thieves' Highway doesn't strike me as making a good fit with the definition I was taught to consider to be ridiculous years ago. Perhaps it's just a comedic film-noir where everything works out in the end. Perhaps it's about role-playing.