David Goodis’ 1953 novel The Burglar was made into a film of the same name three years later by Paul Wendkos. Goodis himself wrote the screenplay and it follows closely the novel’s grim and seedy tone and its protagonists’ ugly fate.
The plot involves the theft of emeralds from a wealthy family (the film innovates and makes the victim a phony spiritualist who’s been bequeathed a fortune by an eccentric industrialist) and the anxieties and travails of Nat Harbin, the leader of the gang of thieves who tries to keep it together as his comrades fall out over how to deal with the haul – ‘a package of grief’ – should they get it to a fence straight away or wait until the hot merchandise cools a little?; amid sexual tensions over Gladden, Harbin’s step-sister (this element is more pronounced in the film than in the book); and the corrupt cop on the case closes in on them looking to steal their score.
In the film, Dan Duryea is good as the tortured Harbin aiming to be ‘honourable within oneself in a corrupt world’, as is Peter Capell as his whinging accomplice, Baylock, who wants nothing more than to 'sleep and die'; while Stewart Bradley is suitably menacing and brutal as the rotten police officer, Charlie – ‘a policeman only when he wears a uniform’.
Goodis’ novels were overlooked as too pessimistic and melodramatic in America and it was only the interest taken in them by the French New Wave filmmakers – most notably Francois Truffaut, who turned Down There into Shoot the Piano Player – that reminded the world of Goodis’ unique voice.
The Burglar was also filmed as Le Casse in 1971 by Henri Verneuil (an Armenian, born Ashot Malakian in Rodosto, Eastern Thrace) as a glossy Franco-Italian caper movie, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo as Harbin (Azar, in the film) and Omar Sharif as his nemesis, Inspector Abel Zacharia.
(Watch the film with English subtitles here).
The locations of the film are changed from gritty Philadelphia and sordid Atlantic City to sunny, vibrant Athens and the stunning Greek islands. The film is replete with car chases, stunts and fight scenes, while the gang of thieves stays in the Athens Hilton rather than in a derelict shack in the 1956 film or a dingy hotel in the novel. Gone also is the ‘quiet suffering’ of Harbin (Azar) to be replaced by a Raffles-like jewel thief, who charms and jokes his way through the film.
Only Omar Sharif is interesting as the shabby police inspector, who resents the rich people he’s been tasked to help recover their property, deciding instead that the $300 he’s paid a month is not enough for a man of his tastes, ambition and intelligence and that securing the emeralds for himself rather than returning them to their decadent, ungrateful owners is real justice.
