Asphalt

Media: Film
Title: Asphalt

The reason lovers of film and film history should see Asphalt (1929) is to discover one of the first film noirs. If you were to throw this film up at SAM during the Film Noir Series this autumn it would be accepted as noir with little argument, though many may be unhappy with its silence. So once again Silent Movie Mondays has not only provided another fantastic film with perfect musical accompaniment via Dennis James, it has shown me yet again that most film innovations occurred in the silent era. The talkies merely added, well, talk.

What about Asphalt is prescient of film noir? First the look, Asphalt is set in a teaming city mostly shot at night. The city is large beyond a single human’s comprehension. It is active, loud and uncontrollable. And no one is to be trusted, especially not the gorgeous woman in furs who flirts and then robs you blind. Bringing us to the femme fatal, looking beautiful and played beautifully by Colleen Moore imitator Betty Amann. She tempts the innocent young man (still living with his parents) to accept sex instead of bringing her to jail. He accepts, after a quite well performed inner battle with his sense of duty, and becomes sexually obsessed with and sexually possessed by Amann. This fall into the urban underworld from a position in honest society is yet another noir theme. As the film begins we see the young man directing traffic (in the daylight), naively believing he is in control of the uncontrollable city. By the end he has murdered for Amann, the ultimate sign of love for the femme in the twisted moral code of the noirs. Finally, you will see echoes of much of the cinematography in later noirs. There are the shadows and darkness (perhaps most notably in the scene where the criminals are tunneling into the bank, and for a good 30 seconds the frame is almost entirely black), and the use of camera angles and shots up crooked stairways to convey inner turmoil.

This is a film that calls for multiples viewings because of all that is packed into it, or, perhaps more importantly, once you realize all that has been unpacked from it in film history.