THE THIEF

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 743, 9 October 1953, Page 19

THE THIEF

(Harry M. Popkin-United Artists) HE THIEF, so the publicity handouts. tell me, is the first feature film without a line of dialogue to come from Hollywood in, the 25 years since movies first became talkies. I don’t know how close to the truth that is-Hollywood makes claims like that with the same exuberafice as it handles superlatives. and memory. even when- it is long, is rarely broad enough to furnish ah effective check. But I am sure that a pretalkie audience couldn’t have made head or tail of the picture. If you could show it to a group of desert-island castaways whose sole link with civilisation over the past quarter-century had been a pile of eroded gramophone records, they would be either bewildered or bored. The more worldly-wise among them might know something about the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and therefore have an inkling of what went on in the building with that nameplate on its portico, but they could not be expected to know the significance of the words Atomic Energy Commission, to perceive (except in some moment of vague disquieting intuition) a connection between the two buildings, or to understand why the apparently respectable workers) in the one establishment should be covered by dassiers and identification cards in the other. It would not be difficult for them to deduce that Dr. Allan Fields (Ray Milland), the nuclear research worker, was spying; but if they had been familiar with scientific practice they might wonder why there was any need for him to do. so-why scientific formula should be secret. And I imagine that in the end the more intuitive among them might elect td go back to their desert islands. with a fresh selection of LPs. But you and I, who have spent the past 25 years in the desert of civilisation, don’t need words to eke~out the drama of The Thief. We can catch ail the allusions, recognise each jagged fragment from the contemporary nightmare

and match it against its fellow. We know all the answers-or all but one. And there is no doubt that a wordless script provides a disconcertingly appropriate treatment for the theme. It accentuates the mental conflict of the scientist caught in a web from which there seems no escape, in a dilemma which he can discuss with no one. It serves to underline the stealthy operation’ of the spy-ring, the furtive, unannounced assignations of the go-be-tweens, the general impression of a silent but remorseless battle in the shadows, The Thief is, in fact, not only a bold but on the whole a successful film experiment, and one that is likely to cause a good deal of discussion wherever it is shown. The naturalistic treatment (reinforced by some splendid outdoor photography) may remind you often of Mark Hellinger’s Naked City. The soundtrack has not been eliminated. though the spoken word has, and the place of dialogue has been taken by the noises of Washington and New Yorkmost of them invested with a_ larger-than-life significance by the scenes with which they are associated. But the very naturalness of the treatment underlines the need for at least some dialogue. Even sparingly used it would have brought the drama a ‘little closer to us. The appearance of Miss Rita Gam (TV’s gift to the movies) was possibly contrived to meet the lack of human warmth in the script. She has nothing whatever to do with the story. She has not any effect upon the development of the action (save to stall it occasionally): in fact, one might wonder why she was dragged in at all-if it weren’t patently obvious. Even the desert-islanders could follow her without dialogue.