The Asphalt Jungle (1950) | |
Plot Synopsis (continued)
Day 4: Monday Evening The police link Doc's release from prison with the heist, and Doc surmises: "Somebody in the department with a few brains has decided I'm the guy." He thinks that is the reason that they have placed his "wanted for theft" mug shots on the newspaper's front page, with headlines:
The headlines of a manhunt compel gunman Dix and Doc, the only at-large criminals, to hurriedly leave Donato's. On their way through a railroad car barn area the evening after the heist, Doc and Dix are confronted by a night guard (Ray Teal) who recognizes the ex-convict, and Doc suffers a bloody head wound before Dix knocks out the guard. In the middle of the night, they find refuge with Doll where she is staying (on Merton Street in the vacant apartment of a girlfriend). While hiding out at Doll's place with Dix and being treated for his head injury, Doc summarizes the problems and multiple bad breaks that doomed the heist:
Meanwhile, the taxi-cab hackey Charles Wright (Benny Burt) that had deposited Doc at Cobby's "bookie-joint" establishment earlier reports to the police station and the Commissioner about his recollections. He claims he had picked up "Doc" at the train station a week ago on Friday, the 16th.
Following the tip and with pressure from above, Lt. Ditrich is sent to Cobby's warehouse with a search warrant. In order to break the case, strong-armed Ditrich puts the heat (or squeeze) on the cringing Cobby, beats him up, and forces obedience from the cowardly bookie to sing, "turn states" evidence and name his accomplices:
Cobby agrees and betrays the gang for a better deal with the judge (and signs a confession). The police (and Commissioner Hardy) finally catch up with Emmerich at his cottage with Angela, where he is promising her a trip for a change of scenery (to "the coast, Florida, anywhere you like"). In the memorable scene before the authorities arrive, she proposes going to Cuba - a beach locale she's only read about in a magazine:
Once two detectives and Commissioner Hardy enter, Emmerich is threatened with arrest (for "complicity in robbery and in murder"). He remains defiant toward Police Commissioner Hardy: "If I were you, Hardy, I'd think up a few more charges. You might make one of them stand up if you get an imbecile jury and the right judge." Hardy reveals that Cobb has made a thorough signed confession, and hands it to Emmerich to read. Angela is summoned from her back bedroom, where she insults Detective Andrews: "Haven't you bothered me enough, you big banana-head?! Just try breaking my door and Mr. Emmerich will throw you out of the house." She is questioned by the Police Commissioner about her previous confession and false alibi and cover-up to shield him. Sensing problems after being encouraged by Detective Andrews to "get it over with, and be smart," and by Emmerich to "tell him the truth," Angela complies and confesses to Hardy that she was untruthful before. And then she apologizes and tearfully asks her sugar daddy about her trip to Cuba:
Shortly after, Emmerich asks to phone his wife, but instead pens a note to her at his desk in his study: ("Dearest May - Forgive me - I cannot bear to face what I have done to you I - "). But unable to face up to his crimes, he rips up the unfinished note and then shoots himself in a desperate act of suicide. Day 5: Tuesday Gus is arrested and thrown behind bars near where a cell where Cobby has already been incarcerated, after physically trying to attack Cobby for betraying everyone ("You wait and see, you dirty fink! You're gonna wind up where your pal Emmerich is! You're gonna wind up in the morgue! You wait and see, you dirty fink!"). In another part of town, the police (who have been alerted after Cobby ratted out the gang) break down the door to the Ciavelli household. They find a family wake and last rites being conducted by a priest over the coffin of the deceased Louis Ciavelli. Dix and Doc read headlines of Emmerich's suicide (LAWYER EMMERICH SHOOTS SELF) - the well-educated and respected attorney who practiced in the city for over twenty five years committed suicide to avoid disgrace and exposure. Emmerich's poor judgment to avoid scandal, jail time and financial ruination disturbs Doc:
In their preparation to leave the area, Doc announces to Dix and Doll that he plans to take a taxi to the edge of town, and then be driven as far as Cleveland. He offers some of the stones, $50,000 worth, to Dix (in exchange for $1,000 in cash to finance his flight), but the 'hooligan' declines: "What would I do with 'em? Can you see me walkin' into a hock shop with that stuff? First they'd think they were phony, and then they'd yell for the riot squad." Doll looks longingly at the jewels as they are rejected, and sewn into Doc's outer coat. Doc wisely refuses Dix's offer to to carry a heater as a precautionary measure:
Day 5: Tuesday Evening and Late Night After the mastermind criminal leaves, Dix delivers a footnote tribute to the German, and then watches his departure from a window as he walks down a rain-slickened, dark street:
Doc hires a Globe company taxi-cab, driven by a fellow German named Franz Schurz (Henry Rowland), and bonds with him by speaking German. The driver agrees to drive Doc all the way to Cleveland - for a promised $50 tip. Doll purchases a getaway car for $400 for Dix, now that he has begun to bleed again from his side and wants to drive home to the Kentucky farm of his youth. The compassionate, supportive Doll vows to help him drive since he is weakened and is beginning to lapse in and out of consciousness: "I just want to be with you." With his avowed weakness and predilection for young nymphets, Doc is quickly captured by police on the outskirts of town while he is detained in a roadside cafe for a few critical minutes to watch a young, well-endowed girl dancing named Jeannie (Helene Stanley). Entranced, the self-indulgent pedophile provides her with a few dollars worth of nickels to feed the jukebox, after which he voyeuristically watches the teenager's nubile figure as she gyrates and dances to jukebox music in front of him. Doc believes he has "plenty of time" when urged by the cabby to leave. Outside after being arrested by two law officers and found to have the jewels sewn into his overcoat, Doc admits sadly that his lingering delay of "two, three minutes" at the soda fountain - "about as long as it takes to play a phonograph record" - was all that it took to cause his arrest and loss of freedom. While Dix is slowly bleeding to death and passed out, enroute in the middle of the night, Doll stops in at a small-town physician's home, after she is given directions by a railroad man named Mr. Atkinson (David Clarke). After briefly examining Dix and giving him an IV drip, Dr. Swanson (John Maxwell) realizes he hasn't been treated for a few days. As the suspicious doctor is overheard in a back room phoning the local Sheriff about the gunshot wound and informing on them, they hurriedly race to their car and drive off. The doctor wryly states as they disappear: "Well, he won't get very far, that's for sure. He hasn't got enough blood left in him to keep a chicken alive." Police Commissioner Hardy, pleased that "maybe we're getting somewhere at last" in the fight against crime, holds a press conference with reporters after the arrest of the duplicitous cop Lt. Ditrich (the one dishonest or corrupt cop in a hundred). [Note: Cobby undoubtedly finked on him.] During his impassioned, moralizing speech, Hardy turns on four radio speakers (lined up in a row) that broadcast crime reports (a robbery, two men with guns, a shooting and a strong-arm slugging), and then announces that crime doesn't pay. He creates sensational headlines for the media when he melodramatically postulates what the city (or entire world) would be like without urban law enforcement to keep back "the jungle" of career criminals ("predatory beasts...without human feeling or human mercy"). He asks what would happen if there was no police presence to respond:
Day 6: Wednesday Morning In the final downbeat sequence, an ironic conclusion following the Commissioner's speech about police pursuit for a "hardened killer," Dix drives furiously with Doll to his beloved Kentucky homeland to fulfill his last obsession - his lost childhood dream. Hallucinating with memories of the simple life he once experienced at the farm, he mumbles to himself as it approaches, signaled by long rows of white fences:
Under the bright, sunny sky of the dawn, Dix parks
at the outer white fence-gate just outside his family's Kentucky
Hickory Wood Farm. He opens the white-fence gate and staggers into
the bluegrass field. [Note: The scene was filmed on location in Lexington,
Kentucky.] In the lyrical ending, he falls down exhausted and expires
from his bleeding wound in the meadow grass, amidst four grazing
and nuzzling colts he had dreamed of owning. |