Armored Car Robbery

Richard Fleischer: Armored Car Robbery (US 1950). In the finale, LAPD strikes at the Los Angeles Metropolitan Airport. In the middle, below the wing of the airplane: Charles McGraw (Lt. Jim Cordell).

Ryöstö Los Angelesissa / Jagad av radiopolisen.
Richard Fleischer / États-Unis / 1950 / 67 min / 35mm / VOSTF
Avec Charles McGraw, Adele Jergens, William Talman.
Séance présentée par Kiyoshi Kurosawa, hosted by Jean-Francois Rauger.
Viewed at the Festival Toute la mémoire du monde 2023, La Cinémathèque française, salle Georges Franju, dimanche 12 mars 2023, 19h00 20h10

Dave Purvis, dangereux criminel, reste inconnu de la police. Il organise minutieusement le braquage d'un fourgon blindé pendant un match de baseball. Mais les choses tournent mal, et l'inspecteur Cordell se lance à la poursuite de sa bande.

« Un crime se produit, la police intervient, un inspecteur poursuit un criminel en fuite. Pourquoi cette histoire si simple attire-t-elle l'œil du spectateur ? C'est parce qu'elle représente l'essence du cinéma. N'importe qui peut la comprendre : c'est ça le cinéma. On s'émerveille de la vivacité et de l'efficacité de Richard Fleischer, sa mise en scène construit son film autour d'éléments purement cinématographiques. Plusieurs scènes comptent parmi les plus inoubliables de l'histoire du cinéma ; celle du hold-up au stade de baseball, ou celle où le méchant, joué par William Talman, tire sur ses camarades. » (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

AA: When Richard Fleischer started his film career at RKO in 1942, a many-sided talent was revealed. A lasting achievement of Fleischer's formative years was a cycle of seven low budget thrillers made in 1948–1952, the last of which was The Narrow Margin.

The 1950s were a golden decade of the "big caper film", and Armored Car Robbery was released in the same year as its most celebrated achievement, The Asphalt Jungle, an A picture. Fleischer revisited the genre later in an A production, Violent Saturday.

But the beauty of the B movie is that it reveals talent in its naked form, defying the constrictions of time and budget. As Kiyoshi Kurosawa remarks in his introduction, the revelation here is of the essence of cinema, a pure cinematic talent.

The short duration of the B movie can also turn into a blessing, resulting in an admirably compact expression that reminds us of a definition of poetry: a discourse charged with meaning. Musa lapidaria.

Action cinema is a perfect school for mise-en-scène and montage. Armored Car Robbery is a tale of professionals with a dual focus, equally on criminals and the police. The narrative is based on the chase.

A master criminal, Dave Purvis (William Talman), has survived under the radar thanks to his extreme caution, constantly changing names and addresses. The heist is planned, rehearsed and carried out well. But the Los Angeles Police Department happens on the scene earlier than expected, and a chase is immediately launched on motorways, the harbour and the airport.

There is a police procedural emphasis. Professionalism is highlighted, and there is documentary appeal in the account of the coded language and the latest technology of radio communication and wireless surveillance. Yet the mission is also personal. The leader of the team is Lt. Jim Cordell (Charles MacGraw), and his partner Lt. Phillips (James Flavin) is killed in the gunfight following the robbery. The scene at the hospital is brief, but the feeling is enhanced by the heartfelt presence of Anne Nagel as the widowed Mrs. Phillips. It was Nagel's last role in a theatrical feature film. Solidarity among the police is manifested in a quiet and laconic fashion. The police are not glorified as heroes. Their strength is their good team spirit.

With the gang of thieves it's different. Dave Purvis's partner is Benny McBride (Douglas Fowley) who introduces Al Mapes (Steve Brodie) and William Foster (Gene Evans) into the team. Benny's motivation for the heist is to prove his worth to his wife, the burlesque dancer Yvonne LeDoux (Adele Jergens). Unbeknownst to him, Yvonne is having an affair with Dave with whom she plans to escape. When Benny is fatally wounded in the gunfight after the robbery, Dave refuses to call a doctor. For him, Benny is "expendable", as are all the other partners. No honour among thieves, no mafia loyalty. A brutal pun about Benny and his wife: "The Naked and the Dead" (Norman Mailer's novel had been published in 1948).

There are no redeeming features in the criminals, particularly Dave and Yvonne. The focus on the cash nexus evokes Jean Domarchi's essay "Le fer dans la plaie" (1956), in which the critic celebrated Hollywood for its insight in commodity and money fetishism, penetrating the essence of capitalism sharper than Mosfilm and well-meaning progressive film-makers. Domarchi claimed that Marx would have loved Minnelli, particularly The Bad and the Beautiful, in which the producer reduces his talented team into expendable instruments, commodities. Just like Dave and Yvonne treat their team.

Fleischer does not demonize the gang. He shows them as victims of themselves and as their own worst enemies.

The police procedural approach was an aspect of a trend that had been growing since the end of WWII in espionage, journalism and police films produced by showmen like Louis De Rochemont and Mark Hellinger. The Naked City was the most famous achievement in the trend that was inspired by Italian neorealism, not least in the enthusiasm of shooting on location.

Armored Car Robbery was shot in and around Los Angeles, and the IMDb lists locations such as: Los Angeles City Hall, around Wrigley Field (no longer extant), Los Angeles County USC Medical Center and San Fernando Valley (the motor court that is Dave's final address). Los Angeles Metropolitan Airport (today Van Nuys Airport) is the final setting.

Armored Car Robbery is generally characterized as a film noir, but I have my reservations. For me, it is an excellent caper film that belongs to the post-WWII wave inspired by neorealism and shooting on location.

Richard Fleischer, whom I had the good fortune to meet twice, was an amazing director and a lovely human being, but I don't find in him a film noir sensibility. There is a dream mode in every great film (even documentaries), but the peculiar oneiric quality distinctive to film noir is absent here. All his life, Fleischer was fascinated with the psychopathology of murder, but his approach was that of a sober doctor who will find out about the mysteries of the criminal mind.

There is no madness in the method of Richard Fleischer. There is no transcendent dimension of evil. There is no cosmic agony. The streets are not dark with something more than night.

The vanitas theme is common to the big caper films, most fully achieved in The Asphalt Jungle. It was the struttura portante of John Huston's oeuvre from The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre till The Man Who Would Be King and Prizzi's Honor.

Armored Car Robbery is the earliest film I remember with the image of the robber's suitcase falling to the ground and banknotes flying to the four winds at the airport. Stanley Kubrick reused the image memorably in The Killing.