Russell Rouse - The Thief (1952)

Dr. Allan Fields (Ray Milland) has been spying for the Soviets by passing top secret documents from his position as a scientist at the Atomic Energy Commission, the AEC, to them. One afternoon in New York City one of Field's contacts is struck by a car and killed while he had in his possession a tin canister of microfilmed documents that Fields had given him. When the FBI finds out that the documents came from the AEC in Washington D.C they start to check out all those that are employed there and Fields seeing that the noose was closing in on him becomes a man on the run.





This is a pretty ambitious noir film that dared to tell its story without a single line of dialogue. It's plot is a bit hokey: a nuclear scientist who had agreed to pass on information to a fiendish band of communists (are there any other kind?) has second thoughts and must allude himself from their grasp. The film combines a wonderful mix of claustrophobic scenes of tension where our (anti)hero holes himself up in a small room while the phone rings menacingly (conjuring memories of Milland's brush with fear and paranoia in THE LOST WEEKEND), and terrific cat-and-mouse chase scenes that are truly Hitchcockian, including a climax on the top of the Empire State Building (how come Hitch never came up with that one?). Ray Milland does a terrific job as usual: one can almost hear his thoughts. And the cinematography is some of the most innovative you'll ever see outside an Orson Welles film. Don't get caught up in the idea that this is a 'gimmick' film. This is an innovative film, much in the same vein as some of the most inventive shows in THE TWILIGHT ZONE series. Try to open your mind to a fresh perspective and you won't be disappointed. (IMDB comment)







El ladrón
Rodada en plena ebullición de la denominada "guerra fría", en su trama encontramos a un físico nuclear que está siendo vigilado por el FBI ya que se sospecha que, dentro de sus investigaciones, en realidad está realizando funciones de espionaje para los enemigos soviéticos.

Un thriller que tiene la curiosidad de que carece de diálogos para narrar la historia, como si de cine mudo se tratase. De ahí que la importancia de la música sea fundamental, lo que llevó a su autor, Herschel Burke Gilbert, a ser candidato al Oscar a la mejor banda sonora. El público no pareció muy interesado en el experimento, aunque la película acabe creando un clima adecuado y un inédito tratamiento psicológico de los personajes.







29P