The first time I watched The Asphalt Jungle, my attention was naturally focused on the planning for the heist of a jewelry store and how it all goes wrong, both during its execution and in the days following. The mastermind is Herr Doctor Erwin Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe) or “Doc” for short. Because he is a German immigrant, speaking with an accent, it is funny to hear him use the slang words “caper” and “hooligan,” but for him they are technical terms, the latter referring to a necessary ingredient of what is denoted by the former.

What caught my attention on a recent viewing was how pathetic most of the characters in this movie are. The man who supposedly is bankrolling the caper is Alonzo D. Emmerich (Louis Calhern).  He has a wife who says she doesn’t feel well, lying in bed, begging him to stay home with her because she gets so nervous in the big house they live in, with no one but servants around. He says he can’t stay home with her because he has “business” to attend to, that business being the double cross he is planning to pull on Doc after the robbery. You see, he doesn’t actually have the money to fence the stolen jewels, as he promised Doc he would, because he is on the verge of bankruptcy, what with “two houses, four cars, half a dozen servants,” and, as Doc learns from a prostitute he spent the night with, “one blonde.”

That blonde is kept in the other of those two houses Emmerich owns. She is Angela (Marilyn Monroe).  It has been noted by film critics that Marilyn is often paired up with weak men, as in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and Niagara (1953), and this seems to be the case here. Whether the men are weak to begin with or whether a man just naturally becomes weak when he falls for such a sexually desirable woman, it is hard to say.

Anyway, she calls Emmerich “Uncle Lon.”  He tells her he doesn’t like it, but she persists in doing so anyway.  The word “uncle,” if taken literally, would suggest incest, pouring cold water on his love for her.  It also suggests that he is too old for her.  In any event, when he kisses her, it seems all she can do to tolerate it for a second or two before easing away from him, her patience for this show of affection having reached its limit. From this we may infer that she lets him have sex with her when he visits, but she gets it over with as quickly as possible. Emmerich’s wife back home loves him, and she is nice looking, but he would rather take scraps from Angela.  Later on in the movie, when Angela fails to provide him with an alibi, he blows his brains out.

The hooligan that the Doc needs for his plan is Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden). At one point early in the movie, we see Dix in a lineup, if you can call it that. In any other movie I have seen featuring a lineup, about five men fitting the description of a witness stand in a row.  Some of the men are just policemen in plain clothes, but least one of the men is the suspect, who cannot see the witness who might pick him out.

But not in this movie.  There are only three men in the lineup, the rap sheet of each one being clearly announced, only one of whom would be likely to commit an armed robbery, which is Dix, of course. The witness previously said the man who pulled the stickup was tall.  So, Dix, who is six feet, five inches tall is standing next to a man played by Strother Martin, who is five feet, five inches tall, a whole foot shorter than Dix. Moreover, Dix can see the witness and glares at him.  The witness gets scared and says he isn’t sure.  Lieutenant Ditrich is exasperated that this phony lineup, purposely designed to single Dix out for identification, has failed to bring about its intended result.

As a result, Ditrich is now in trouble with his boss, Police Commissioner Hardy (John McIntire), who is upset about all the crime statistics.  When Ditrich tells him the witness got cold feet, Hardy tells him to lock the witness up and scare him worse, not exactly what you would call a witness protection program.

Dix is released.  Sometime later, a woman he knows, Doll Conovan (Jean Hagen), comes over to his flat. She’s a dancehall girl, and the place where she worked got shut down because Police Commissioner Hardy is on a tear, having ordered Ditrich to shut down the clip joints.  Doll is locked out of her apartment because the raid took place before she got paid. Out of the goodness of his heart, Dix lets her stay for a couple of days. The next morning, we see that he has slept on the couch.  This is not something required by the Production Code.  Doll is in love with Dix, but he just isn’t interested in her.

In fact, he doesn’t seem to be interested in any woman.  In this way, he is the opposite of Doc, who is obsessed with women.  Doc’s plan after the robbery is to go to Mexico and chase pretty Mexican girls in the sunshine. However, he never gets there.  Because he spends too much time ogling a teenage girl on his way out of town, he is arrested by a couple of cops who just happened by.

But all Dix wants to do is save up his money and buy back the Kentucky horse farm his family lived on before they lost everything as a result of bad luck, including when a black colt of much promise broke its leg and had to be shot. Ironically, Dix could have saved up the money he needed to buy back the horse farm a long time ago, but he keeps playing the horses at the racetrack, and they keep losing.

He places those bets with a bookmaker named Cobby, who also helps Doc find the men needed for the robbery.  In addition to Dix, there is Louis the safecracker and Gus (James Whitmore), a hunchback, who drives the getaway car.  Louis is fatally wounded when a gun goes off accidentally. His wife becomes angry at Gus for getting him involved in all this, calling him a cripple and a crooked back.  Cobby is also the one that arranges for Emmerich to finance the heist, who in turn is supposed to see about finding a fence for the jewels.  Cobby is a weak, nervous man, whom Ditrich beats a confession out of, forcing him to rat out everyone else. But Ditrich has been on the take, so he also ends up in jail by the end of the movie.

The double cross Emmerich had planned doesn’t work, and by the end of the movie, all the men involved one way or another are either dead or in jail.  Dix had been shot during the double cross, but he doesn’t believe in doctors.  He is determined to make it back to that farm his family had when he was a kid. Doc had tried to disabuse Dix of his dream of home, saying, “Listen, Dix. You can always go home.  And when you do, it’s nothing. Believe me. I’ve done it. Nothing.” But it often happens that when a man approaches the end of his life, he wants to go back home, wherever that is.  So, with the help of Doll, he manages to make it back to what used to be the family horse farm before dying from loss of blood, saying that if Pa can just hold on to that black colt, everything will be all right.

Toward the end of the movie, Commissioner Hardy gives a speech about how much crime there is in the city and how terrible it all is.  It comes across as an exculpatory epilogue, justifying the movie we have just seen as a kind of public service announcement, intended to make us ordinary citizens more vigilant and supportive of the police.  But since it is Hardy’s policy to terrify witnesses and throw them in jail if they don’t do what they’re told, I don’t think those crime statistics are likely to get any better.