At the 1950 Venice Film Festival, Huston was nominated for the Golden Lion and Sam Jaffe won the Best Actor Award.
In 2008, The Asphalt Jungle was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
[7][8] When criminal mastermind Erwin "Doc" Riedenschneider is released from prison after seven years, he visits a bookie named Cobby in an unnamed Midwestern river city.
Dix tells Doll Conovan—who is in love with him—of his dream to buy back the horse farm that his family lost after a terrible year that included his father's death and a prized colt breaking its leg.
To access the jewelry store, Ciavelli hammers through a brick wall, deactivates an alarm to admit Doc and Dix, and uses home-brewed nitroglycerine to blow open the safe.
Doc scolds a morose Emmerich for his foolish plan and tells him to offer the loot to the jeweler's insurance company for 25% of its value since peddling it with the heat on is out of the question.
Because of the delay, a lustfully oblivious Doc is recognized by two policemen, who arrest him after finding the stolen jewels hidden in his overcoat.
At a press conference, Hardy notes that three of the seven suspects have died, three others have been arrested, and the one on the loose is a hardened killer "without human feeling."
Back at the wheel, the rolling green fields of Bluegrass country pass as Dix deliriously rambles about the sprightly colt he loved as a boy.
The film was an adaptation by director John Huston and screenwriter Ben Maddow of the 1949 novel by crime writer W. R. Burnett.
Huston and Ben Maddow wrote the adaptation, which emphasized the crooks' story and reduced the police procedural aspect.
Writer Ben Maddow said "a lot of the power [of the movie] was due to the fact that these were New York actors who all knew one another and were trying to outdo one another—and who were stimulants to one another.
"[1][6] The Production Code Administration's main concerns with the script were the detailed depiction of the heist and the fact that the character of the corrupt lawyer Emmerich seemed to cheat justice by killing himself.
According to film noir authority Eddie Muller, Huston later said that Monroe was "one of the few actresses who could make an entrance by leaving the room."
[1] Both Huston and star Sterling Hayden, a World War II hero who had fought alongside Yugoslav Partisans and had joined the American Communist Party upon returning to the U.S., were members of the Committee for the First Amendment, which opposed the blacklisting of alleged communists active in the film industry during the Red Scare.
[2][3] A contemporary review in Photoplay stated: This brutally frank story of crime and punishment in a Midwestern city was directed by two-time Academy Award winner, John Huston—son of the late Walter Huston.
Likewise Sam Jaffe does wonders as a cool-headed mastermind, James Whitmore is taut as a small 'fixer' and John McIntire is crisp as a chief of police.
"[13] The film spawned a television series of the same name, starring Jack Warden, Arch Johnson, and William Smith, which ran for thirteen episodes in the spring and summer of 1961 on ABC.
Beyond this, none of the characters in the film appeared in the television scripts, and the plots were devoted to the exploits of the major case squad of the New York Police Department.
[5] In 2008, The Asphalt Jungle was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Turner Entertainment entered into an agreement with the French television channel, La Cinq, to broadcast the colorized movie.
Finally in Turner Entertainment Co. v. Huston, on May 28, 1991, the Court of Cassation cancelled the judgment delivered on July 6, 1989, stating that colorizing the movie transformed the original artwork enough to potentially transgress the author's moral rights.