The Kingdom of Shadows

I don't know what's wrong with the producers of the DVD for The Asphault Jungle that they couldn't use anyone better than Drew Casper to do the voice commentary on the film. This is a film I like very much, and something of a classic in the John Huston Canon, there is no real point in hearing Drew Casper talk about it though, so I'd like to be on the record saying that they need a different voice commentator.

The film is a film about women masquerading as a crime film. All of the main characters have certain "issues" with women. From Dix's complete ignorance that they exist (while a woman is aggressively after him), to Emmrich and Riedenschneider's obsession with women, to finally Cobby's overt homosexuality. Even the men who don't have "issues" with women, need money due to their responsibility to women (Ciavelli). The heist is only there to draw these characters together, and show how the common attachment relationship to women (or the idea of women), is something that defines each of these character's relationship to this venture that will eventually ruin them all.

That's also what's so lovely about Marilyn Monroe's little role in this movie. It is clear that the lawyer honestly loves his wife, but his relationship with Monroe is something unreasonable, something strange that he has no control over, similar to the professor's obsession with young women, and Dix's confusion when it comes to young women. Money is simply a matter of business for these people, There is a certain logic to money, but when you begin delving into the ways of a young woman then you are getting into the religious.

What's so lovely about this film, is every character is motivated to crime through a vague notion of the mystery of the almighty. That certain things make life worth living, and those things are inevitably mysterious.

Buy the Asphault Jungle here