Hi. Today I'm reviewing The Big Steal from 1949 starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. This is a very interesting choice of film noir, so to speak. It's kind of like a heist film. Basically, this person named Fiske, robs the Mitchum character named Halliday of $300,000 in payroll money and takes off with it or tries to. There is a police officer named Blake who is after the money and the thief, and he thinks that Halliday played by Robert Mitcham is part of the big steal here, but he isn't. He's trying to get Fiske and get the money back, the payroll that he was responsible for because he's a lieutenant in the Army. I forgot to mention that.
Anyway, having said all that, Jane Greer plays somebody with another unrelated connection, nonetheless she has an interest in her own stake in the money that this man has stolen. She lent him $2,000 and he's her ex-boyfriend and he's dropped her and she's pissed off. $2,000 was a lot back then. Anyway, they both end up going after Fiske who took the money, and Blake is after Mitchum or Halliday, Lieutenant Halliday, US Army Lieutenant Duke Halliday.
In any case, they get together, he and Jane Greer get together and go after this guy, Fiske. And all I'll say is that there are plenty of twists and turns, delightful little surprises, and not so great surprises. And I thought it was a lot of fun, a lot of fun packed into a relatively short movie. I think it was like 70 minutes long, 71, something like that. And I got to tell you that the backstory of this is almost as interesting as the movie itself. Maybe more interesting.
When they were filming this, Robert Mitchum had been incarcerated on drug charges. Apparently he had been smoking some marijuana with people somewhere, at a party, probably, and made an example of, I suppose. And so he was in jail for a bit of time for that, and they were filming scenes without him, and then bringing him in afterwards to have the scenes with him and inserting them here and there were necessary. And I thought, oh my God, I'm just imagining the nightmare for the editor, for the script supervisor, for everybody.
I love this quote. It's from Wikipedia. It says, "Mitchum in the picture would come running into a sequence and the trees would be green, and Bendix would be right on his heels, and the tree would be bare." So continuity problems, yes. But nonetheless, a fun picture to watch and just great to see Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer together on screen again, but not killing each other. You gotta love it. And if you don't love it, well, baby, I just don't care. As Robert Mitchum once said in another movie with Jane Greer. But trust me, I hope you'll love it. Give it a watch. It's worthwhile. Thank you.
Directed by Don Siegel
Screenplay by Gerald Drayson Adams and Daniel Mainwaring (credited as Geoffrey Homes) (based on "The Road to Carmichael's" published in 1942 in "The Saturday Evening Post")
Produced by Jack J. Gross
PS: Here’s the trailer which should win an award shows you how to use stock footage in the background most effectively during a chase scene!
PPS: Filmed on location in Romantic Mexico!
Just don’t drink the water! :)
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