BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

claudius131 As others have noted, the script is not well written.It's a good example of what can happen when a novelist adapts his own work for the screen. When it comes to editing, authors just hate having to kill their darlings, and so it was with Goodis leaving in those numerous dreadfully long monologues, which might be acceptable in a novel where the plot plays out in the reader's mind, but are inexcusable in a movie where the rule is 'show it, don't tell it'.Unless dialog moves the plot forward it needs to be excised.Goodis gave the director some real challenges, and what we end up with are characters not able to look at each other but instead stare without emotion while they babble on interminably about themselves, stopping the action dead.Otherwise the plot, apart from some logic holes, is a good one, and typical of Goodis.Casting is another problem for me. Mansfield's acting is simply atrocious. Durea is a fine performer but having to act like and say that his age is 36, when in fact he is and looks almost 50, jars.Peter Capell chews the scenery trying to depict Baylock.Stewart Bradley (Charlie) personifies evil. I enjoyed his performance. I think Goodis writes best when he's writing for the villain of the piece.

BILLYBOY-10 It coulda been a contender, but the sloppy direction ruined it. Duryea is good as the tormented soul keeping watch over Jayne Mansfield,in one of her signature "endowed" roles, as the kind hearted love-sick (for Duryea) e. She's dreadful. There are three in this crooks "organization" who steal a flashy emerald necklace from a dippy woman living in a mansion. Now, how do they dispose of it since it's so hot it will burn their hands if they touch it. Finally, after much drama and over-acting, they head for New Jersey to find Mansfield who is involved with some dude she met while on her back on the beach with her qualities showing "up". Dead cop, dead member of the organization, la dee dah, etc, etc. Finally Jayne and Dan end up on the boardwalk (I guess Atlantic City?) being pursued by her dude who happens to be a cop they know who is after the necklace, blah, blah, blah. Previously, the 2nd member of the organization gets beaten to death by the dude. The boardwalk scenes are corny and horribly directed. Jayne goes free, Duryea gets it in the back and front by about 27 bullets from the bad cop dude's six shooter, the real cops show up, the cop-dude is exposed and the movie ends. This was thrilling and exciting but so terribly directed it misses being very good, so, as it is, its OK. Would only recommend it because of the ever interesting Duryea. Incidentally: Martha Vicers who play the hot Carmen Sternwood in "The Big Sleep" eleven year earlier is equally hot in a pivotal role here also.

bravo78 The Burglar fits the bill for film noir. But it also proves that film noir can be quite average. The movie starts in quick. An 'organization' of burglars plan and pull off a heist to steal a valuable necklace from a 'spiritualist'- aka con artist in Philadelphia. Unfortunately Act II consists of the waiting. And the angst. Gawd, the angst. And this is where things start to fall apart. Watching the crooks go stir crazy while holed up waiting for the heat to die down is simply not compelling. Mansfield fits the bill as eye candy but puts in some deplorable acting. Capell's character has a monologue about moving to South America that goes on much too long. And Duryea plays his character like a deer in the headlights. He knows he should move but can't seem to take action. But finally a decision is made to pull up stakes - to Atlantic City. There's even a car chase.And something in the water in Atlantic City seemed to have changed director Paul Wendkos into Orson Welles. I had to check the credits to see if Welles was listed. (he's not). Heavy Welles influence ensues and were treated to a fairly solid close. The plot is tight and comes with a twist. Vickers femme fatale role falls flat, what with sharing angst with Duryea's character and all. Though I'm sensing without the Hayes code they might have been free to share something besides angst. Duryea is solid but his character was poorly written.The Burglars is not a great film noir movie but is a passable entry into the genre. 6/10

oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx Henry Hathaway's movie The Black Rose concerns a Saxon squire who travels to China and back again during the Middle Ages encountering marvels, romance and adventures along the way. It's a pretty and fun Technicolor movie containing a soupçon of rapture. On an intellectual level it can be fairly piffling until close to the end when the Norman King of England refuses to persecute the rebel Walter any longer, recognising that his animosity towards Normans is far from treason, but just a political manifestation of something very personal, conflict with his father. It was an eye opener to me at the time, how much Freudian issues play a subliminal part in our politics. This sort of mature perspective is to be found in The Burglar. It represents an opening up, an efflorescence of noir, typical of the late era (Mickey One, Blast of Silence). In noir authority is often an oppressive force, but in The Burglar, there's the suggestion that it's not the authorities and the system that pre-figure our doom, but our upbringing. It's up to you though, there's leeway for you to see it either way. Who's the enemy is it dad or Big Brother? In one scene, seemingly totally unconnected from the rest of the film, Nat (The Burglar - Dan Duryea) mooches around the precincts of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and is seen sitting directly below the statue of John Barry, the first head of the United States Navy, in Independence Square, three miles away, just moments before. In sight is Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed. The locations are deserted and he's watched over by some sort of passant sculptural beastie and towered over by fluted columns. Are these relics of the past or an overarching system and structure in which he's alternately powerless and hounded or irrelevant? Does the beastie see him, or is it just a charming piece of stone and is the indelible stain of Dad the issue he can't rub off? I saw a film Paul Wendkos made decades later, Hell Boats, and there was a general ambivalence there as well, which I find very stimulating and mature. There are no easy answers to The Burglar. Although I've mentioned Freud, The Burglar isn't one of those annoying movies that are dogmatically Freudian snoozers; the conversations surrounding the past all come off as extremely natural in effect.A little tardily, onto the plot! A bunch of small time burglars figure they can up the ante and go for some sparklers. It doesn't take a genius to work out that fate's cosh is waiting for each of them in the shadows one way or the other. Dan Duryea's lead is the standout, but you gotta feel sorry for Peter Capell's hyperactive pop-eyed lookout Baylock. Scared of his own shadow he dreams of owning a plantation in Central America, he hysterically calls it buying "ground", as if what he stands on the rest of the time is something that might open up and swallow him at any time. It's just so clever how this movie grinds out a noir atmosphere with slight tricks of vocabulary.Even loving this movie with all my heart, I must admit that a relevant criticism for many genre fans wondering if they should watch The Burglar or not is that it lacks thrill in the middle section of the film, principally because Nat has a death wish and isn't putting up much of a fight. Things pick up for the finale on the famous Atlantic City Steel Pier, which comes off as a merging the skews of Lady From Shanghai and Mickey One.Wendkos' film should have lead to a glittering career, but more meretricious aesthetics triumphed.