847 The Asphalt Jungle

[swo17]

The Asphalt Jungle



In a smog-choked city somewhere in the American Midwest, an aging criminal mastermind, newly released from prison, hatches a plan for a million-dollar jewel heist and draws a wealthy lawyer and a cherry-picked trio of outlaws into his carefully devised but inevitably doomed scheme. Anchored by an abundance of nuanced performances from a gifted ensemble—including a tight-jawed Sterling Hayden and a sultry Marilyn Monroe in her breakout role—this gritty crime classic by John Huston climaxes in a meticulously detailed anatomy of a robbery that has reverberated through the genre ever since. An uncommonly naturalistic view of a seamy underworld, The Asphalt Jungle painstakingly depicts the calm professionalism and toughness of its gangster heroes while evincing a remarkable depth of compassion for their all-too-human fragility, and it showcases a master filmmaker at the height of his powers.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary from 2004 by film historian Drew Casper, featuring recordings of actor James Whitmore
• New interviews with film noir historian Eddie Muller and cinematographer John Bailey
• Archival footage of writer-director John Huston discussing the film
• Pharos of Chaos, a 1983 documentary about actor Sterling Hayden
• Episode of the television program City Lights from 1979 featuring John Huston
• Audio excerpts of archival interviews with Huston
• Excerpts from footage of the 1983 AFI Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony honoring Huston, featuring actor Sam Jaffe and the filmmaker
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien
• More!

[Ribs]

Glad to see they've done a new translation for the subtitles

[mteller]

Can't wait for the minuscule new extras!!!!!

whoops

[domino harvey]

Only too happy to be proven wrong!

[Ashirg]

Is this first Marilyn Monroe on DVD/blu-ray in the collection?

[Jeff]

Is this first Marilyn Monroe on DVD/blu-ray in the collection?

Yes.

The extras here really are something else. That two-hour Sterling Hayden doc played festivals got a small theatrical release in 1983. It's sounds like it's not some hagiography either, but more of a direct cinema experience with the aging and embittered Hayden. I'm not familiar with Toronto TV personality Brian Linehan or his City Lights show, but it sounds like he was lauded for his interview style, and it's always fun to hear Huston as raconteur. Throw in the Eddie Muller and John Bailey interviews, and you've got quite a package. This is how you upgrade a Warner release to your standards, Criterion.

I wonder if the "More!" might be an episode of the TV series of The Asphalt Jungle. It mostly had nothing to do with the film, but one episode, "The Professor," is more or less a remake of it.

[Ribs]

Beaver in the Jungle

[FrauBlucher]

This looks pretty awesome. CC does another stellar job with an old hollywood b&w.

[flyonthewall2983]

Blu-ray.com

[jazzo]

Had a blast revisiting this film, but had one beautiful unexpected pleasure at watching the 1979 City Lights episode on the disc. I knew it was there, but never made the connection that this was, of course, the same City Lights with Brian Linehan that I used to come home to in the suburbs of Toronto and find my mother watching almost every day.

And then I remembered this little beauty from childhood and chuckled to myself all evening:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dCEUErRzWE

[richast2]

That two-hour Sterling Hayden doc played festivals got a small theatrical release in 1983. It's sounds like it's not some hagiography either, but more of a direct cinema experience with the aging and embittered Hayden.

I finally got around to watching Pharos of Chaos the other night and man is it dark. As a film, it's pretty poorly made, but the interviews they got with Hayden are fascinating and unsettling. Hayden is incredibly drunk, stoned, and bitter throughout. At that point in his life, he basically was Roger Wade from The Long Goodbye. In the hands of better filmmakers, this could have been a great documentary. Still, it's an incredibly frank portrait of a renowned actor, and I'm glad Criterion included it on the disc.

[Florinaldo]

I was watching the Eddie Mueller piece, with him providing his rather generic schtick on film noir and Huston, when a very amusing blunder caught my eye. While discussing the influence of the film on the novel "Du rififi chez les hommes" by Auguste Le Breton, there is a cutatway to what we are supposed to think is a picture of the author.

Well, it's a writer all right, and even one named "Breton".

Except it's André Breton, the High Pope of Surrealism. Obviously, someone did a hasty research job for this supplement and confused the two Bretons, even though they do not look remotely similar.

The documentary on Sterling Hayden was for me the highlight of this edition (besides the movie), morbidly fascinating but impossible to stop watching, if only in spurts.

[whaleallright]

impossible to stop watching, if only in spurts.

isn't this a contradiction?

oof on the Breton thing.

[Florinaldo]

impossible to stop watching, if only in spurts.

isn't this a contradiction?
.

No.

No matter how much SH's drunken philosophical ramblings may induce me to take well needed breaks, I found myself always compelled to go back to the documentary. I thought it was simple and self-evident, but apparently not.